


Boneyard

by sybris



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Canon Divergence - Weirdmageddon, Self-Harm, Vomiting, au from jerseydevious, badass!dipper pines, i really dont know how else to tag this, this has a lot of swearing so be careful i guess??, will tag more once we continue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 13:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6054067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybris/pseuds/sybris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Oh, Pine Tree. Pine Tree, Pine Tree, PINE TREE! YOU of all people should know that it’s never what I HAVE done…” he paused for effect, and he swallowed thickly once more. </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <em>Slowly, his mouth opened. A small, black hand reached down towards him, the thumb and forefinger closing in on his temples, and he didn’t have time to resist as the hand turned him back around to face the bubble. Realisation flickered like a determined light bulb; what the fuck was Bill getting at here? </em></p><p>  <em>“… It’s ALWAYS what I WILL DO!”</em></p><p> </p><p>Thirteen years ago, hell descended on the world from a multi-coloured crack in the sky in the triangular form of Bill Cipher.</p><p>Thirteen years ago, Mabel Pines was forced into a prison bubble against her will and transported to an unknown point on the planet, her imaginative mind used to fuel the apocalypse dubbed 'Weirdmageddon'.</p><p>Thirteen years ago, Dipper Pines vouched to find her, using any means necessary - morally appropriate or not.</p><p>[HIATUS]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE: PART ONE

**Author's Note:**

> sup triangle fuckers! this is my first ever gravity falls fic, and it's based off of an au created by the ever lovely jerseydevious - all credit goes to her!
> 
> i dont really know what else to say, other than be careful. this is not a nice fic. this is not a nice au. it is bloody, it is dark, it is harsh and it will probably have so much angst you won't be able to hold back any potential tears from pouring from your overworked tear ducts and straight onto your device of choice, absolutely destroying it in every way possible.
> 
> but yeah, potential triggers with be tagged as they come, and i hope you all enjoy!

**_2012_ **

_The world was burning._

_The world was burning and he couldn’t do anything about it. There was a great big x-shaped crack in the sky that spilled psychedelic colours into his orange coloured world. There was fire, nothing but fire, all around him, with odd creatures pouring from the crack in the sky like bats in a cave._

_Funny, considering the literal eyeballs with bat wings that also poured from the giant crack in the sky and were turning people into goddamn stone statues._

_His thighs burned. His thighs burned and his calves burned and the world around him burned, just like his lungs and every part of his body. His nails, filthy and jagged, dug into the palms of his hands, his arms swinging at his sides as he ran, ran, fucking ran._

_He was scared and tired and running for his life, and he was hungry, too, and probably thirsty, and God, he was eighty-seven per cent sure his shoulder may or may not be dislocated. He could hear the unholy screeching of the eye-bats around him, hear the cries of pain as people became statues, but none of that mattered. Ford was gone, dammnit, and the Journals were, too, so as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t help the townsfolk of Gravity Falls._

_Not yet, anyway. Not yet._

_A high pitched laugh echoed throughout the town, a stampede of feet following soon after. He needed to go, right now, before that isosceles bastard and his ‘friends’ found him and decided he should be dinner. God, where the fuck was Mabel? And Stan? And Wendy and Soos and-_

_“Oh, PINE TREE!” A voice sang, just as high pitched as the laugh. He hated that voice. He hated that laugh. He hated the one-eyed, three-sided, brick-patterned, top hat-bowtie-combo-wearing son of a bitch it belonged to._

_He looked left and right, trying to find a building or an alley or_ something _to escape to in order to avoid that suddenly all powerful fucker, but all of the buildings were burning, and he hadn’t seen an alley for a while now. Were there any alleys in Gravity Falls? Fuck, he couldn’t remember._

_“You can’t hide FOREVER, Y’KNOW. Sooner or later, you’re gonna find yourself in a real PICKLE, with NO ONE AROUND TO HELP YOU!” Fuck, he hated that voice. God-fucking-dammnit._

_He looked to his left, just as an eye-bat flew around the corner, and there, right there, was a fenced off alley. He changed directions, his ankle protesting painfully, and darted for the fence, preparing himself to jump. Closer, closer, God, it was right there!_

_His thighs ached with adrenaline as he jumped, one foot digging into the fence, the other not far behind, and with his hands grasping the spiked top of the picket fence, his upper arms burning, he heaved himself up, up, up and over._

_He slammed his back into the bare fence on the other side, wrapping his arms around his stomach and holding his breath as he waited for the stampede of monsters to pass. Oh God, where was Wendy? She’d know what to do. Or Stan? So would he, but if he was honest with himself, he’d very much prefer Wendy over Stan. Something told him she would know perhaps just a little bit more than his Grunkle._

_Another high pitched cackle. He wished he hadn’t missed when he’d thrown that punch; he wished he’d hit that triangle fucker right in the middle of his stupid, overgrown eye._

_“C’mon, Pine Tree! Your precious sister is out there, waiting for you to rescue her from her prison! Oh, you useless beings are so FRAGILE and EASY TO MANIPULATE! NOTHIN’ like a DAMSEL IN DISTRESS right in the centre of the APOCALYPSE, RIGHT, PINE TREE?! OH, THE THINGS I could do to her! Tap into her mind, show her ALL THE THINGS that you RUINED FOR HER! OH HO_ **HO,** _THIS WILL BE **FUN!”**_

_He felt his breathing pick up and his anger flare. He needed to find his sister. He needed to find her and hug her and apologise to her and he needed to get to wherever the fuck she was being held; he would scale the Empire State Building if he fucking had to, he just needed Mabel back!_

_The ground shook beneath him. Why, he didn’t know, but he didn’t dare peek over the only thing keeping him safe._

_A faceless, loaf-shaped creature stomped past the alley he was hiding in, followed by a gang of other monsters of varying appearances, and he felt his stomach twist. Was this seriously the kind of shit he had to face? Fuck, he needed Mabel. He seriously needed Mabel._

_The gaggle of creatures seemed not to see the alley or sense him in anyway, and he silently thanked whatever religious figure had made that possible. God, Gods, Allah, whatever, he seriously, seriously, seriously needed Mabel, but he had no idea what to do or where to find her, and the only ones who seemed to fucking know just so happened to be after his blood._

_Great._

_Fucking. Great._

_A shadow moved on the concrete below him, and he watched somewhat curiously as a hue of pink shone in its place, similar to how a stained glass window would create colours and patterns on the floor. His eyes narrowed, but he lifted his head, slowly, cautiously, his fingers twitching with anticipation. His digital watch beeped quietly, incessantly, as it told him another hour of the day had just passed, but he ignored it._

_Because there, right there, right in the middle of the fucking sky, was a pink bubble._

_A pink bubble that just so happened to have chains all around it and the shooting star from Mabel’s sweater smack bang in the fucking middle._

_His knees creaked as he pulled himself to his feet, his jaw dropping slightly with disbelief. No. No, it couldn’t be true. Mabel was in there? Mabel,_ his Mabel, _was in whatever fucking hell that bubble had to be?_

_A beam of light poured over him, and he jumped, twisting awkwardly and probably spraining his ankle more. His arms tightened around the oddly empty backpack he was hugging to his chest, his stomach turning. A gust of wind tipped his hat back a little, and his fingers fumbled slightly as he reached up to straighten it absentmindedly._

_But he didn’t have time to really worry about it, because Bill had found him._

_Bill fucking Cipher._

_“Well, well, well! Look what we have here!” The dream demon cackled, rattling his overly fragile bones. “So, Pine Tree! You really thought you could hide from ME, huh? The guy that’s been following you since GIDEON first summoned me?”_

_Another laugh. “Well, I dare say I’m FLATTERED!”_

_He felt his brow furrow and his jaw tighten with bubbling fury. “What did you do to my sister, you triangular freak?!” He screamed, pointing a shaky finger at the figure before him._

_The single eye bore down on him, and he gulped under its gaze. The lids surrounding it narrowed, the pupil inside of it becoming defensively slit, just like a cat’s would, the whites of the eye turning red and cracks of blue and purple splitting inside of it._

_“Oh, Pine Tree. Pine Tree, Pine Tree, PINE TREE! YOU of all people should know that it’s never what I HAVE done…” he paused for effect, and he swallowed thickly once more._

_Slowly, his mouth opened. A small, black hand reached down towards him, the thumb and forefinger closing in on his temples, and he didn’t have time to resist as the hand turned him back around to face the bubble. Realisation flickered like a determined light bulb; what the fuck was Bill getting at here?_

_“… It’s ALWAYS what I WILL DO!”_

_The other hand, just as small, just as black, slid into his view, the thumb and forefinger of that hand closing in on each other, just like they would when someone was about to snap their fingers. But why would he need to –_

Ding.

_The determined light bulb finally flickered on._

_Oh. Oh, fuck._

_Just as quickly as he’d realised what was about to happen, Bill snapped his fingers, and all too soon, Mabel’s bubble was gone._

_He stood there frozen for a few seconds._

_That goddamn laughter echoed in his ears. God, how many times did this guy fucking laugh?_

_“Good luck finding her, Pine Tree!” Bill sang, but his voice hardened quite suddenly. “You have the whole world to search.”_

_… Fuck._


	2. PROLOGUE: PART TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyoooooooo guess who's back, but probably not for long!
> 
> yes, yes, i'm back with yet another chapter literally the day after i started this fic, but don't expect a lot. this frequently happens with fics of mine. besides, they're short chapters, but fear not, young one; over time, i'll definitely expand the lengths of the chapters. i just gotta set the scene first with four, maybe five different prologues!
> 
> trigger warnings for self harm. literally right off the bat. be careful with that.

**_ 2017 _ **

Dipper Pines winced as he dragged the point of a knife into his forearm.

Five years. Five fucking years today since the stupid-ass fucking Weirdmageddon had begun. He’d been nearing his thirteenth birthday when it’d all began, just a small kid with big dreams who often bit off more than he could chew, but he was almost eighteen now, and boy, had that changed.

The events of Weirdmageddon – or Oddpocalypse as some had called it – had been… traumatising, to say the least. Everything had gone wrong, starting from the exact moment he’d walked into the Mystery Shack – God, he missed that piece of shit – and had that argument with Mabel, right up until he’d been forced to watch Mabel’s-

No. No, he wasn’t going to think about it.

He scratched his surprisingly thick beard absentmindedly, his eyes furrowing as he stared down at the blood dripping from the freshly opened wound. Slowly, sluggishly, hesitantly, he brought out the bandage he kept in his pocket. It wasn’t fresh, and he’d found it in a first aid kit somewhere in Wisconsin or some shit – honestly, how much more video game could you get? – but it’d have to suffice.

He watched with half-lidded eyes as he wrapped the bandage around his forearm, his stomach growling. God, this was all so fucking shit. He needed food. He hadn’t eaten in what felt like a week, but he was infinitely glad for the seemingly endless supply of peanut butter and Nutella weighing down his battered old backpack; sure, it wasn’t nutritious in any way, shape, or form, but it was the fucking apocalypse, and food was food.

Plus, for some unknown reason, this shit was fucking everywhere.

A small part of him was beginning to suspect that maybe Bill just really likes those two particular spreads, but the much larger part of him told the smaller part that it was being stupid, if the box of cereal also nestled in his backpack was anything to go by. If there was one particular thing he knew about Bill Cipher, it was that if he liked something, he hardly went for anything else.

Like alcohol, he’d learnt over the years.

Dipper carefully worked his fingers around the pin he was using to keep the bandage in place, clipping one end into the bandage and pulling the other end into another part. Already the off-white of the bandage was tainted a rapidly darkening pink, the blood of the wound seeping through, and he sighed, lifting his head to look at the barren wasteland below.

Well, maybe barren wasn’t the right word to describe it – in fact, the city stretched out below him was filled with vegetation, vines roping in and around abandoned buildings, filtering through broken glass and feeding off of the sun beating down on them and the occasional storm that passed through, too. Flowers grew from cracks in the bitumen that were the roads, a few even growing onto the tyres of the abandoned cars sitting cluttered in the middle of the city.

Dipper smiled. Yep, if there was one thing he actually liked about the world-wide apocalypse, it was the scenery. It reminded him of better days, days filled with water balloons and illegal fireworks, days filled with mystery hunts and way too many near-death experiences; days where he still had his family.

The smile quickly faded. His fingers fiddled with the battered old camera dangling from his neck; it wasn’t much, a small, beat up Polaroid camera that he’d had for as long as he could remember, but he loved it. It was basic in appearance, a dark blue-green-grey mix as its base colour, but he loved it all the same, for on the back, just under the look through window thingy, was a name.

_Mabel Pines._

God, he missed her. Five long years of travelling across the country, and he still hadn’t found her.

With shaking hands, Dipper brought the camera closer to his face, preparing it to take a photo. Every so often, he’d come to a certain spot, a certain city, and he’d look out at whatever landscape stretched out towards the horizon below him, and he’d feel nothing and everything, all at the same time. He’d forget about everything that had gone wrong in the last five years; his Great Uncles, Stan and Ford, Wendy, Soos, Mabel, the rest of Gravity Falls, and he’d just feel… free.

It was in those exact moments that he always lifted the camera he’d kept close to his heart, the camera that had always been hers, and take a photo, in the hopes that when he finally did find her, it was the positive shit he showed her.

He chuckled to himself. Always the optimist, Mabel was.

Is.

Whatever.

His combat boots, well-worn but in surprisingly good condition, left deep imprints in the lush grass below as he made the hike down to the city, Polaroid picture in hand and camera removed from his neck. He swung his backpack off of one shoulder, bringing it around to his front, his fingers clutching the picture with an odd desperation, but he managed not to crumple it spectacularly as he unzipped the largest pocket of the bag. His stomach growled; God, he seriously needed to eat.

Dipper more or less shoved the camera into his bag, reaching in at the same time for a jar of whatever condiment he found first to have a few spoonfuls of; turned out he was feeling more peanut butter today, but hey, he didn’t mind. What was the point of having two different types of spreads if you had a preference, right?

He made quick work of retrieving his trusty baby spoon from the front pocket; the hairs on the back of his neck were on edge, and it wasn’t cold out today, which meant only one thing, and he did _not_ like said thing. He needed to get into the city if he was gonna have That Thing happen to him – past experiences told him it was not a good idea to remain in open places.

Less hiding spots, his paranoia had said.

Less hiding spots, That Thing had agreed.

With aching knees and a burning forearm, Dipper Pines, seventeen, prepared himself for the worst as he trudged into the ‘abandoned’ city below.

Not like he’d been doing it for five fucking years anyway, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so. yeah.
> 
> i understand the 'layout' of this fic might not make sense, but trust me, tomorrow it will.
> 
> uhh... leave any comments below, i guess!
> 
> my [tumblr](http://pedoseidon.tumblr.com/)


	3. PROLOGUE: PART THREE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> won't say much this time, other than holy shit this thing is popular. and im only like three chapters in???? thanks for the support, i guess!
> 
> trigger warnings for torture
> 
> (oh yeah. i went there. but jersey went there first when she was telling me about potential ideas for it so i cant really take all the credit, can i?)

**_ 2012 _ **

_His whole body ached, one way or another._

_God, he was in so much pain in that exact moment he was sure he was about to vomit all over the already dirty floor beneath him. His leg was shattered, the shin obliterated by the fist of one of the many creatures that took residence in the appropriately named Fearamid – he couldn’t remember which one, there was a surprising number of them – in order to ‘keep him grounded’._

_And, unfortunately, it had worked._

_Another burst of pain flooded his veins as he shifted his leg ever so slightly. The door to his cell creaked open, and the pink demon – what was her name again? Pyronica? – stepped in with a tray of food in her fire lit arms. Well, that’s what he expected, anyway, but who was he kidding? These guys were fucking demons._

_Of course it wasn’t fucking food._

_Pyronica or whatever her name was set the tray down on the floor next to him, and sure enough, it was a bowl of razor blades, a spoon set next to it, and some sort of liquid – fuck, that was blood, he was gonna be sick – filling the rest of the bowl. Oh God, they were gonna make him eat razor blades and blood like a sick bowl of cereal, weren’t they?_

_Dipper glanced up at the demon, his eyes hopefully pleading, but the demon just giggled, sitting on her knees and pulling the tray onto her lap. She picked up the spoon, the metal shining light onto the wall, and he felt tears prickle in his eyes. He tightened his jaw, clenched his teeth together, pressed his lips into a thin, pale line, but it was futile, dammnit, and he fucking hated it._

_The chains connecting him to the wall clinked together as he trying to make himself smaller. He shrunk back in fear, watching with wide eyes as the demon dipped the bowl of the spoon into the bloody concoction that was his meal, watching with wide eyes as she pulled it out, one, two, three razors settled on the spoon, watching with wide eyes as she moved it closer towards his mouth, closer, closer-_

_He refused it adamantly, his bottom lip quivering, until she eventually rolled her eyes with a huff._

_For a few precious seconds, he thought she was going to give up entirely. He took those moments to shuffle back as far as he could, his shoulder creaking in protest, and his shattered shin flaming with intense pain. God, he really needed Stan, or Ford, or anyone, really. They’d know what to do, how to get him out, how to-_

_The spoonful of blades and blood was shoved brutally into his mouth._

_His lips were sliced as the razors are pushed through, and he feels blood – human blood – dribble down his chin, mixing with the disgusting, neon coloured, Sharpie-smell-tasting demon blood that had escaped from his teeth._

_He gurgled, coughing thickly, wincing at the electric sensation that came as some of the blood dripped onto his bare chest. One of the blades cut across his tongue, more blood filling his mouth, but he keeps the razor blades where they sit; swallowing the damn things would be a hell of a lot worse than letting them sit in his mouth, and he could deal with whatever miniscule stabs of pain the blades brought upon him._

_Pyronica sighed, the sound static-y and bringing a fresh wave of nausea to his stomach. His throat struggled against the thick liquid filling his mouth, threatening to swallow it, some of the filthy mix trickling into his battling oesophagus and into his overly unprepared stomach. God, he was going to throw up. He was about three seconds away from throwing up and his mouth was full of razor blades and two different types of blood and Pyronica was right in front of him and-_

_The demon before him grabbed his chin in her hands and he couldn’t hold himself back from throwing up right in her face._

_She shrieked, her voice sounding like a broken radio, filled with static and fire, and she let him go, stumbling back in pain and disgust. The razor blades had cut her on their way out of his mouth, slicing her cheek and her nose and a few other places, and he could see the red blood –_ his _blood, he thought, a feeling of disgust washing over him – begin to bubble and disfigure her normally flawless skin._

_He couldn’t bring himself to smile in triumph; instead, an entirely new flood of vomit forced its way up his throat from his stomach, and he spewed, all over the floor, some of it splashing onto himself._

_Pyronica’s flames burned a steady purple, her eye crackling and her skin fizzing, and she stared at him. He felt her gaze boring into him; it hurt, tingled, prickled his skin in a weird way, and if he weren’t currently preoccupied with the thought of ‘Oh my God I’m going to die. My last moments on Earth are going to be spent with this pink bitch and I can’t do jack shit about it’ running continuously through his mind, he might’ve considered that a bit more surreal._

_But he didn’t have time to consider it because **he was going to fucking die.**_

_Pyronica contemplated him for a few seconds. She seemed to study him, her eye gazing over his marred flesh, sending his skin into goosebumps and sending shivers up and down his spine, and he felt very exposed. Sure, it wasn’t a new feeling, but it still made him uncomfortable; almost as uncomfortable as the_ puddle of vomit _literally right in front of him._

_He could only watch weakly as the demon turned, her heels gliding in front of each other, and she began circling him like a predator on its prey. He dropped his head; he knew - or at least had a general idea of - what was coming next, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t know what exactly she was going to do to him, and it worried him, left him hanging on to nothing but the knowledge that something bad was coming. Fuck, he despised everything about this entire sequence. He despised the incomplete feeling it left him with, he despised the pain that came with it, and he absolutely despised the creatures he had to deal with on a regular basis._

_Dipper cried out as a burst of white hot pain rushed his nerves from his leg, all the way up to his eyes. He screamed, God, it hurt so much, felt his skin blister as Pyronica’s lilac flames stayed in close contact with his already shattered leg, felt blood drip from his chin in a steady stream, his lips still cut and his tongue still bleeding-_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so does the layout make a bit more sense now? prepare for another chapter... soon. like, probably in the next few hours (in australia, anyway). and yes, it's another prologue, but it'll probably be the last?? idk! who knows what'll happen next!! certainly not me!!!
> 
> i hope y'all dont mind that i threw in a little pyronica headcanon, but hey, she's a pretty open-to-interpretation/overall vague character, so yeah, that's just what i think she'd be like :)
> 
> but yeah! leave any comments below, and my tumblr is right over [here](http://pedoseidon.tumblr.com/), if you wanna scooch on over there and send me love because i want it even though i don't deserve it!
> 
> until next time!


	4. PROLOGUE: PART FOUR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo! okay, so yknow how i said this was the last prologue?
> 
> i lied. there's one more, and it's gonna be big! (not long tho. pls dont expect it to be long)
> 
> also remember how i said it was gonna be out a couple hours after the last one?
> 
> i lied again. liar liar pants on fire
> 
> but yeah! this one isn't as... harsh as the others, but i hesitate to call it fluff.
> 
> whatever. onwards, aoshima!

**_ 2020 _ **

Was something whimpering?

Dipper’s brow furrowed. He wasn’t sure where he was; he’d lost track somewhere in Canada, and hadn’t bothered to keep track anymore, but the view was nice, a forest spread out around him, the town in the centre still mostly intact, and mountains blocking the horizon from all sides.

It was nice. Refreshing.

The gravel crunched under his feet as he moved through the town, his grip on his bat tightening. He never did like being forced to travel; every time he had to pass through a town in order to continue, he just always had a feeling that something was going to go wrong, and, with his luck, it almost always fucking did.

Seriously, hadn’t the world heard of mercy?

Another whimper brought his attention snapping to the left. It sounded pained, distressed, and it set his mind on edge. It’s a trap. It’s a trap set up by Bill, a way to get him killed because he knows Dipper’s way too nice for his own good, but oh, Bill doesn’t know how badly his past traps have failed.

He moves almost silently, reaching behind him and flipping his coat back with a flick of the wrist, his hands fingering around the small of his back for a – there it is! His fingers, long, slender, and broken more times than he can count, wrap around the barrel of a handgun he’d swiped from… who was it… potentially a vampire that had tried to kill him, what, four, five months ago?

But that’s a story for another day.

Carefully, he removed the gun from where it’s tucked into the waistline of his jeans, only to stick it in the pocket of his coat. He didn’t exactly know if he’d need it yet, but he just had a very distinct feeling that having it in his pocket would be better than where it normally is; easier access and all.

The cold of the town bit into his exposed forearms. Honestly, why did he even have his sleeves rolled up? He felt like such a douche. Here he was, in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, where it’s so fucking cold he – well, okay, so it wasn’t that cold, but still, here he was with his coat sleeves rolled up, his black fingerless leather gloves, and mask that covered the bottom half of his face, and it _was_ still pretty cold, but he forgot the point of this thought.

Where was he going with this?

He still felt like a massive tool.

Another whimper, a little louder this time, followed by a howl that grated his ears with its echo. It seemed more distressed than the whimpers, like a cry for help – wait a minute, this town wasn’t an echo-y sort of town.

… What the fuck was he hearing?

Slowly, Dipper made his way around to a nearby building. This was weird, even for Weirdmageddon, which was weird in itself. An apocalypse where anything can happen, and an echo-y howl was weird? He must really be losing his touch.

God, but he was excited, too, in a strange little way. Was he about to discover an entirely new species? Maybe he’d take a picture of it and add it to the scrapbook he’d been making for the past… what was it… eight years? Oh, or maybe he’d add it to the journal he’d been keeping for a while! Oh man, he was about to discover a new species, if only Ford-

He felt his face darken. No. No, he wasn’t going to go there.

A light in the window caught his attention. Huh, that was weird. He didn’t think there was electricity anymore, but, as far as the neon sign advertising strippers was concerned, apparently there were some places where electricity had survived.

Dipper tilted his head to the side, his neck cracking loudly. Fucking stupid-ass rock pillows were going to be the death of him, honestly; his whole upper torso was so stiff and sore and no, Dipper, focus on the task at hand.

Which was…?

Oh, right. The whimpering.

Dipper wrapped his fingers around the doorknob of the building, pushing the door open and setting off a bell that quite sadly announced his entrance. He looked up. The bell was dented, bent a little out of shape, and that made him feel a bit disappointed. He liked bells, when they weren’t alive and destroying his chances of preventing this entire fucking mess.

Something in the shadows began to growl. He lowered his gaze from the bell, his eyes raking over every nook and cranny they could. The interior of the building was kinda nice, actually. It was simple, the walls lined with various shelves and one or two pieces of art, with a counter directly in front of the door and a few lovely looking couches near the front window. There was a table next to the arm of one of the couches housing a stack of old gossip magazines, and a potted plant directly next to the door that was so fake it was still here, still fresh looking, in the middle of the fucking apocalypse.

He moved his attention back to the task at hand. Finding the whimpering. No, wait, the growling.

His eyes soon adjusted to the dim lighting, and a dark ball was nestled into a corner of the room. From the looks of it, it was breathing, which was… off-putting, to say the least. Balls didn’t naturally breathe, did they? He actually wasn’t sure anymore.

The ball moved. It rose onto four legs, tucked two tails behind its back ones, and he watched as it pulled its lips back, snarling at him. Well, at least he knew it was _friendly._

Dipper forced his shaking body to calm down. _C’mon, body,_ he told it, _you’ve faced worse shit than this._ Slowly, carefully, and with a decent amount of hesitation that he shouldn’t have but apparently did, he moved towards it. How did he go about this again?

He heard something crack. Did that come from the not-a-ball-anymore ball? Bit by bit, he eased himself closer to the animal, extending his free hand out but keeping his grip tight on the bat. He watched curiously as a second pair of legs uncurled from the animal’s stomach like a rather visceral pair of wings, stretching down, and one, two, three eyes blinked at him from the dark. Were animal eyes meant to glow? Probably not, but then again, they also weren’t meant to have six legs and two tails and three eyes.

Weren’t they?

He didn’t have time to consider it because the animal barked, loud and echo-y and sounding like three different types of barks stacked on top of each other. He watched as well as he could in the lighting provided as the animal, now confirmed to be a dog of some type, tried to step forward, only to whimper and shy away.

Dipper looked at it. Why was it shying away? Did he have his hair out again? He felt around his shoulders. His fingers got tangled in his mane of hair, and he swiped it up, twisting it into a bun and snapping it together with the hair tie on his wrist. Where did he even get a hair tie? Who the fuck knows. Certainly not him.

The dog seemed to be watching his bat, so Dipper looked down, following its gaze.  He considered it for a moment. Why would the dog be scared of his bat? It’s not like he’d… smashed... heads... with it…

He turned the bat over. There was blood all over it.

_Oh._

He quickly dropped the bat. It was clear that this dog was scared and alone, and from what he could see, it may also be an abandoned puppy, and that made him feel sad. Maybe he could be friends with it.

Thankfully, the dog seemed to recognise his action of putting down the bat as a sign of something akin to surrender, and it sat back on its back legs, its front two – no, _four_ – legs standing in front of him. God, that second pair of legs was something he could only describe as surreal; they weren’t _dog_ legs, that was for sure, but they looked almost like… deer legs?

Whatever they were, they certainly weren’t dog legs.

The dog still seemed to be on guard, but it physically looked a tad more open. Its ears were towards him, listening to his every move, and it seemed to not blink, but its tail wasn’t doing anything. That was a good sign, right? Oh God, he fucking hoped so.

Dipper held out his hands and lowered himself a little bit. “Hey, puppy,” he said, his voice hoarse and quiet. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

The puppy seemed to consider him for a moment, so he shuffled forward a little more, his hands still raised. He moved them around, always making sure his palms were facing the dog, until they were parallel with each other on his sides. He spread his elbows out. That’d be calming, right?

Fuck, he had no idea. He should probably let the dog come to him.

Gradually, he moved down onto his knees, his arms still extended, and dropped his head slightly. Maybe it’d be a bit better if he didn’t look. Would it look more inviting? He hoped so.

He felt a puff of hot breath on his hand, and he started. His head whipped up, his neck cracking in the process, and sure enough, right there, right in front of his fucking hand, was the dog.

And it was _gorgeous._

Hesitantly, he brought his hand around to pet it. It was a small dog, probably the runt and therefore left behind, but God-fucking-dammnit, he was going to love this dog with every fibre of his fucking being. He would kill for this dog. He would literally murder someone for this dog.

“Hey, puppy!” He said, and the dog started wagging its twin tails wildly. Its tongue – forked, apparently – lolled out of its mouth, and he knew the dog felt the same way about him that he felt about it. But this pup needed a name.

He scooped it up and checked the sex.

“A girl, huh?” He mumbled, and the dog tilted its – her – head to the side.

Dipper stood, tucking the puppy into his free, not-filled-with-a-gun coat pocket, and swiped up his bat.

“C’mon, Darla,” he said, chuckling when she looked up at him. “Let’s go on a little adventure.”

After all, he still hadn’t found his sister.

But at this point, he was beginning to doubt he ever would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so what did yall think? leave any nice little comments either down below - god i sound like a youtuber. dont forget to subscribe lmfao - or at my [tumblr](pedoseidon.tumblr.com)! whichever yall prefer!
> 
> until next time!


	5. PROLOGUE: PART FIVE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and this is the final prologue! i'm so sorry for the delay yo; my laptop fucked itself over and i needed to get it re-imaged, plus this chapter took a bit more planning than i was expecting, but i'm back! yay!
> 
> anyways, trigger warnings for gore!

**_ 2012 _ **

_He was fucked._

_He was so fucked._

_He was completely and utterly_ fucked.

_The light glinted off the object in his hand, reflecting off of the metal and onto the brick wall next to him._

_They’d stopped chaining him up a few months ago – or maybe it was weeks? He had no idea – after the whole vomiting-on-Pyronica thing cleared up with a good long beating from every fucking demon in the Fearamid._

_He was still sore from that._

_He watched the light on the wall as he twirled the object in his fingers. God, his leg hurt so much. Every fucking time he moved it, a burst of pain shot through his entire body, and it’d ache for hours and hours afterwards, until he moved it again and the process repeated, and it would’ve been healed already if Pyronica hadn’t fucking_ stomped on it.

_But, to be fair, he had thrown up on her._

_He hesitated as he brought the object down on his skin, levelling it just below the knee and right above where the shattered shin began, and winced. He took in deep breaths. In, out. In, out. Fuck, he could feel his heart pounding, and he shut his eyes, taking a moment to just breathe the tears away._

_Dipper placed his bundled up shirt in his mouth, his teeth sinking into the dirty fabric. He just needed to do it. Dear Lord, why the fuck was it so hard to just fucking do it? It should be easy. It shouldn’t be this hard. It wasn’t even that big of a deal!_

_He was just cutting off his leg!_

_Slowly, but surely, he began to saw. The object – a knife that, somehow, as his only stroke of luck in_ so many months he’d lost count, _he’d kept hidden in his shorts – bit into his skin, drawing blood, and he had to physically swallow his scream. He wanted to cry. It hurt so much._

_A million thoughts ran through his head, most of them following along the lines of ‘help’ and ‘fucking Christ almighty’. The pain could only be described as excruciating, but, if he was being completely honest with himself, he’d had worse._

_God, he was halfway through, and there was blood everywhere. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, hot, wet, and sticky, and leaving trails on his dirt-caked face, and his teeth’s grip on the fabric in his mouth was tight, harsh on his jaw._

_He needed Mabel. He_ needed _Mabel. Or Stan. Or Wendy, or Soos, or even fucking Pacifica at this stage, if she was okay._

_A laugh, shrill and annoying and grating his half-sawed through bones, echoed throughout his weirdly large cell. He sniffed; he wasn’t ready, he wasn’t done, he needed more time, dammnit, he needed more fucking time!_

_A flash of yellow appeared in front of him, but he didn’t dare look up; his motivation was fuelled by that God awful laugh, and his arm ached with how hard he was sawing. He could feel himself falling faint, but he couldn’t collapse now, not when he was practically tasting glory, even if it was in the form of his filthy shirt._

_A triangle appeared in front of him, yellow and brick patterned and wearing that obnoxious as fuck bow tie-top hat combo, and suddenly, he was face to face – well, eye – with Bill fucking Cipher._

_Bill laughed in a way that sent a shiver of fear running down his spine. “Well, Pine Tree, I ought to hand it to you!” he began, and if Dipper just kept fucking sawing – “You humans sure are DETERMINED, you know. It’s so weird!”_

_Bill floated closer to him. He didn’t look up. Just kept working._

_“Look at me, kid.”_

_He refused, ignoring the dream demon entirely._

_“I said **LOOK AT ME.** ”_

_The room flashed red, and he felt a small, four-fingered hand reach down and grasp his chin. His neck creaked and cracked as he was forced to stare straight into the black-sclera’d eye of the one holding him captive._

_Bill tsk’d. “You sure are a STUBBORN ONE, aren’t you, PINE TREE?”_

_Dipper swallowed. He was so fucked. He was so fucked he was pretty sure he was one sarcastic comment away from dying._

_He bit into the shirt, just in case._

_Bill swung his cane in circles. “Y’know, Pine Tree, you’re pretty committed, I’ll give you that. I mean, sawing off your OWN LEG just to escape and go out looking for your SISTER, who you’re not even sure is ALIVE? Yeesh, talk about PIG-HEADED.”_

_But Dipper didn’t reply. He still adamantly refused to, and his fingers were aching for a distraction, since his previous one required a bit more sight than he was capable of at the moment._

_The demon stopped twirling his cane. He dropped it, letting it hang loosely in mid-air – fuck, that was actually pretty cool, if incredibly weird and unnatural, as well as extremely unsettling – and reached down towards his face. Dipper shut his eyes._

_But Bill didn’t seem interested in hurting him. Instead, his hand, now relieved of the cane, reached towards his mouth, his fingers reaching for the shirt – but they stopped suddenly, right in front of his mouth._

_Bill hummed. “Hm, y’know what? I’m not going to let you talk yet.”_

_He jerked Dipper’s chin, forcing his drifting gaze back onto him. He was yellow again now; he hoped that was a good sign._

_The demon sighed, his form glowing through the duration of it. “Now you listen here, Pine Tree. I’m not here to torture you. I’m here to make a deal. Y’know, because it’s my JOB and all.”_

_Dipper said nothing. To be fair, he couldn’t, so Bill continued._

_“Like I said before, you’re DETERMINED, and stubborn as all hell, so I’ll let you go, kid.” He must’ve seen the shimmer of hope glide across Dipper’s face, so Dipper quickly stamped it out, easing it into absolute doubt. “On several conditions.”_

_Ah, the catch. Always a catch._

_“I’ll let you go, give you a new leg – a PROSTHETIC, mind you, I’m not THAT nice – and let you search for your sister. HOWEVER, I get ANYTHING from you. Anything I WANT, and I can call on it at ANY TIME, and you will not object to said thing. And there are a LOT of things I want from you.” He paused, his single-eyed gaze boring into him, bubbling his skin and boiling whatever blood was left in his veins and wasn’t currently spilling onto the floor. “But, I’ll be even nicer, kid. I’ll let YOU set a limit, as long as it’s above THREE.”_

_His hand, the one still hovering near his mouth, suddenly ripped the shirt from his mouth, throwing it away, and soon, that same hand was engulfed in the blue fire he came to genuinely fear. He leaned back, but Bill, the stubborn fuck, just shoved it closer to him._

_“Call the shots, kid, and you can go find your precious little sister!”_

_Bill was smug, and he hated it; he hated it as he held his own blood-soaked hand towards Bill’s flame-engulfed one, he hated it as he forced his fingers to wrap around the small black palm presented to him, and he hated it as he shook, one, two, three times up and down._

_Bill laughed. It sounded manic, more than usual, as well as a common mix of smug and condescending. He’d known he would agree, and what was worse was that he_ had.

_The world suddenly descending into darkness around him, fading into a deep crimson that sent shivers through his body, the world as he knew it dribbling into a mess of human blood and blue fire._

_But he tried not to dwell on it, because he was free; he was finally going to find Mabel. He was finally going to find his sister, his other half._

_He just hoped she wasn’t far._

_After all, she couldn’t be possibly be that far…_

_Right?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now we head into the main story! are you guys excited? because i'm sure as hell not!
> 
> i should probably warn you all now that, since we're getting into the story itself, updates will not be very frequent. i hope to extend them quite a bit, maybe set a goal of around 5000 for each? idk, guys, but i do know that updates won't be as frequent as you and i'd maybe hope for.
> 
> but aaanyways, leave any comments down below, or come drop in and visit my [tumblr](http://pedoseidon.tumblr.com/)! a land of cartoons, shitposting, feminism, and more!
> 
> see you all next time!


	6. CHAPTER ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god has it been long? i have no idea. i hope it hasn't been too long.
> 
> but anyways, hi guys! i'm back!
> 
> so, just a heads up, this is a pretty sloppy chapter, but it's a chapter, and stuff happens, and it's over 6,000 words so just. accept it. love it. cherish it.
> 
> trigger warnings for major gore.
> 
> oh, and vomiting.
> 
> and really creepy descriptions of stuff.
> 
> basically just be careful.
> 
> enjoy!

**_ 2025 _ **

There was something in the trees.

Natalie started, her grip tightening fearfully on the machete she held dear, and she poised it, ready to attack. The bushes around her rustled, flower petals falling amongst the autumn leaves hiding the forest floor. A few birds flew away - if you could even call them that anymore, with their four wings and patches of scales amongst the greasy feathers – squawking in an unholy fashion.

She stares intently at the spot she’s pretty sure the rustling of the bushes began.

Some bushes to her left move. Her neck cracks as she snaps her attention over, eyes wide and pupils dilating with the boiling adrenaline she can feel heating her blood. She’s only twenty-three, dammnit, she can’t die now!

A cross between a giggle, cackle, and snort surrounds her, coming from three different places and sending shivers down her spine. She can feel the air shifting with the presence of something foreign to this world – this _dimension_ – and she fears for her life.

One, two, three monsters emerge from the trees, and she feels a rush of bile filling her throat. She swallows it before it can come the rest of the way.

The first monster is a deer with a human-like mouth, three legs, and giant antlers that look like they’re a mixture of bone and a cherry blossom tree. There’s blood of all kind covering its slimy coat, mingling with water and leaves and _more blood._ Its tail is what Natalie can only describe as a mermaid tail, and this monster looks like a more demonic version of fucking Vaporeon, straight from the pits of whatever hellish dimension it came from.

The second monster was indescribable, with a small, cat-like body coated in a mix of fur and feathers, small paws, and oh God, its claws were fucking massive. Its tail was split like it had been peeled into a flower, each ‘petal’ lined with small, undoubtedly razor sharp teeth, and a tongue, split in half and forked twice, hissed at her, glow in the dark saliva dripping excessively from it. The creature grinned, pulling its thin lips back as far as it could, and she could see one, two, three, four, _five rows of teeth,_ all shark like and gross.

But the third monster…

She looked away. It was so barbaric she wouldn’t know how to describe it.

Each monster pulled back its lips into a weird mix between a snarl and a smile. Low grumbling noises came from where one would normally assume is their throat, but honestly, Natalie wasn’t sure anymore. All she was sure of was that she was going to _fucking die a virgin._

… Okay, so _maybe_ the last part of that sentence wasn’t important, but she was still going to die.

The second creature screech-cackled, the sound similar to a certain digital flower from a game she remember playing a while ago, and she dropped her machete, cupping both hands over her ears. God, she could _see_ the screech as it seemed to shatter the air around them into a faded display of every colour possible, and she felt her eyes widen at the sight.

The air shifted as another creature – creature number one – joined in on the laughter. It widened its overly human jaw, letting it hang down far lower than it should, and chanted, “F̺̳͔̮͇r̞̘̦͚e̛s̹͖̹h͍̠̜̲͍̀ ͚̬͚͍m̧̜e̛̦̣̲a͍̘t̮̩͎͔͟,̟̳̭̘͓̦̪ ͓̮f̹͓̲̬̻̰r͕͖̰̕e̦͇͔̥̘ͅs̞͚͕̬̻͎ḩ̮̻̩̭̟ ̢̫̬͚̭mȩ͖a̭̝t̘̰͉͈!̞”

God, that was _troubling._

It visibly salivated, the saliva aqua and teal and dripping profusely from its open jaw. It sniffed, long and hard and exactly how someone sniffs when they’re about to have the best meal they’ve ever had.

She shivered and recoiled from it, the screeching having thankfully stopped. Jeez, the atmosphere in that moment was so _suffocating,_ like it was a dark, murky, _greasy_ blanket had covered the world with its disgusting-ness.

Natalie felt her eyes glisten with tears as two of the three monster stepped closer to her, closing in, all the while chanting that same sentence with that horrible demonic reverberation and _God,_ she was going to die, she was going to die, _she was literally five seconds away from **fucking dying.**_

She saw a figure of black twist into her vision, stereotypically mysterious and heroic, and her first thought was _Wow, what a douche._

The figure strolled through the trees, whistling, apparently, and the creatures surrounding her stopped and stared. Their mouths tightened into thin, bony lines, the skin separating in a few places on the third creature; the first piece of action she’d witnessed from the mighty beast.

The figure – a man, if she had to guess, with long hair that fell into a mane around his face and a big lumberjack beard, dressed in a tattered black t-shirt and an equally tattered pair of jeans, as well as a combat boot. Just one. She briefly wondered why until she saw that he didn’t actually _have_ a second foot to put it on – tightened their – his - fingers around the grip of their – _his –_ bat, and she felt a certain sense of cold wash over her as his eyes raked over the scene.

The man’s eyes narrowed. They physically felt cold to Natalie, cold and wet and dark and _insane,_ but she made sure to keep that to herself. Right now, she needed to focus on running before the monsters noticed he’d interrupted them, before they turned back to her and ate her-

“H͕͍̞̯̹ͅe̷̟̟͎̝y͙̬!” Creature number one bellowed, its voice echoing in a way that grated on her ears, sounding like an unholy screech – which, she supposed, it _was_. “Yo͕͠u̳̝̩̹̖̭̫ ̠̠̮͞r͍͚u͚͚̥̖ͅi͎̻͈̝͈̮̮̕n̪̺e͈̺d̸ ̪͍̘̠o̫̦̤͝ų̣͈͓̰͍̪r̦̹ ̴̺m̖̭̥̠e̗͔͍̤̖͉͘a͉̞̘͟l̝̬!͇͙̫̼̯”

The man’s attention drifted over towards it, just as it steadied itself to charge at him, it’s dripping hooves crunching the dead leaves beneath it. Its tail swished up and down once, twice, three times in succession, and it lowered its head to bare its antlers at the man.

She thought she saw the man’s lips curl into a smirk of some sort, but didn’t have much time to process it because the first creature absolutely fucking _flew_ at him.

It all happened in a blur. One minute, she was watching creature number one attack the mystery man, and the next, the man had smashed his bat – his _metal bat_ – straight into the jaw of his attacker.

Her own jaw dropped slightly.

She watched in awe as the creature’s face was slammed into the forest floor, sunshine yellow blood fountain spraying across her, the man, and in a ring around the now dead body. Its face, while once gaunt and ghostly, was concave, its cheeks turning purple and all of its teeth scattered with a sickening _crunch_ that turned her stomach upside down.

The man seemed completely unfazed, however, and she wasn’t sure what scared her more: the creatures, or the man.

It turned out to be the man, however, as she was forced to watch the second creature – smaller, faster, more like lightning than a being – shoot for the man, the mouth of its tail sinking into his false foot, and the mouth of its face preparing itself to close around a chunk of the man’s stomach.

His fucking _stomach._

Just straight up in the middle of his probably hard rock abs.

Natalie could almost feel the line of question marks appear in her head (and, judging by the way her facial muscles contorted, her confusion was probably written all over her face, too).

The man was eerily nonchalant about the attack. Before the second creature’s face sunk its slobbery teeth into the abs Natalie was adamant were there, the man struck out a hand, his fingers closing around the neck of the nimble creature, and she watch the muscles in his hand and forearm shift as he literally _squeezed_ the life out of the being.

Void black blood dribbled from the face-mouth of the creature. Its face was oddly empty looking, its eyes rolling back into its head, but its face itself remain black, almost nonchalant. It scared her.

But nothing scared her as much as seeing the man walk – well, _vaguely limp,_ she supposed – over to the third and final instalment of this segment of her presumably-short-but-really-recently-extended life, cat-like creature still in hand, and shove it straight into the middle of the three tiered opening to the third creature’s stomach.

There was a pool of liquid in the wretched beast’s stomach, that much she could see, but it was one thing to realise that the pool of liquid was actually boiling and at a temperature hot enough that it could – and did – literally fucking cook flesh alive.

And it was another thing to see that the stomach of the third being was pretty much the equivalent of a bowl, and could overflow.

She shuddered.

She turned.

She stumbled.

And she promptly threw up in the nearby bushes.

The man – the young man’s attention finally turned on her, though his eyes, shifty and paranoid and yet strangely gleeful, did drift over to the boiling bodies of the final two creatures every so often. He watched her curiously, his eyes a soft brown that looked like they’d suit any age, roamed her body, from the tip of her half-out-bun to the ends of her apocalypse-inappropriate Converses.

She wiped the back of her hand across her now-not-vomiting mouth, grimacing at the remaining contents of her stomach lingering in her nostrils, the taste sticking to her tongue. Slowly, she turned back around to look at her saviour, her chest heaving with her varying breaths, the overwhelming nausea fastened to the insides of her stomach. It wasn’t pleasant, no, but in her defense, the last nineteen years of her life hadn’t been, either.

Funny, considering her age, but that wasn’t the point, and she _really_ didn’t feel like recounting her entire life in the form of some petty sob story.

Especially when yet _another_ creature casually sauntered out of the bushes from behind the man.

Natalie started, jumping back further towards the Vomiting Bush, and patted around the top of her hole-y jeans for the knife she was _sure_ was around here - there it was! She hastily ripped it from its impromptu holster of one of the belt rings of her jeans, and aimed the blade towards the creature; and, by extension, the man. Was it rude to point a blade in the general direction of someone who just saved your life?

She was pretty sure it was, but once again – what was this, the fifth time? _Jesus Christ almighty,_ she thought – that wasn’t exactly the point.

Natalie watched with something akin to awe as the creature’s twin tails began wagging madly, watched with something akin to awe as the man turned towards the creature and smiled, all straight, yellowing-with-bacteria teeth (she may or may not have ran her tongue over her own no longer pearly whites, and internally cringed at the furry feeling she was forced to feel because of the action), and watched with something akin to awe as the man reached down and _pet_ the creature.

She must have made a noise that accurately voiced how fucking crazy she thought that was, because the man’s gaze whipped back up to meet hers, and the creature’s lips curled into a snarl that beautifully backed up the growl she could just _feel_ emanating from the depths of its throat.

The man – bless his heart – only smiled at her, the smile softer and apologetic and devoid of any gross apocalypse-ruined teeth, but she could still feel something off about it.

It almost felt like the man wasn’t all there.

Like he wasn’t really seeing her.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn’t necessarily have time to further process that thought before the man stood from his kneeling position beside the creature – when had he started kneeling again? – and slowly moved to approach her.

She felt almost like a cornered rat. That was the expression, wasn’t it?

Natalie took a careful step back, her bruised knuckles aching as she tightened her grip on her handy-dandy knife. She was so confused at that exact moment. Who the fuck was this guy? Why had he saved her?

And why the ever loving _fuck_ was he all _buddy-buddy_ with one of **_them?_**

The man – who’s name she _still_ hadn’t caught – seemed to read her questions on her face. Her mother  had always said she wore her heart on her sleeve, and it was in that heart stopping moment that she realised that it was true, and a wave of freshly baked fear rippled down her spine, trickling like melting ice into her very arteries.

The man, to her utmost surprised, re-buckled (cue a seemingly never ending barrage of question marks) the hilt of his metal – _metal –_ bat to his tattered skinny jeans and shoved his hands lazily into his pockets. He kicked at the leaves that littered the forest floor beneath them, but throughout the whole exchange, not once did he break eye contact with her.

She remembered hearing something, back when she was seven and looking at all the cats and dogs in the local animal shelter, about how animals will hold eye contact with each other as a way to assert dominance, and wouldn’t look away, and the remaining trickles of fear exploded into bursts of the horrible feeling.

Was that all they were now? Animals trying to assert dominance against each other?

She held the knife a little tighter.

But the man simply gathered all of his hair – hair that fell in luscious, though ratty, curls down to around his shoulders – and pulled it all up on top of his head, twisting a bright pink scrunchy around the ponytail he’d created and making what would have to be the worst bun ever, in her professional opinion.

She cocked her head to the side, her eyebrows furrowing, but decided not to comment.

Instead, she felt her gaze zero in on something very peculiar on the centre of his forehead.

A birthmark… of the Big Dipper constellation?

The man mirrored her head-cocking, raising a single eyebrow in silent question. Natalie couldn’t pinpoint it, but there was something strange about the man; maybe it was the way he held himself, maybe it was the way his eyes glittered with mischief and insanity, or maybe it was the way the world’s bullying was evident on him.

She couldn’t pinpoint it, but the man seemed to radiate power, power that, until about five seconds ago, she’d never felt before.

It was… odd.

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again and repeated it a couple of times. Finally, she cleared her throat, working her unresponsive mouth around the words she wanted to construct.

“Who,” she began, but paused to swallow down the bubble of _no, danger, stop this_ that constricted her vocal cords, “Who _are_ you?”

The man’s ‘kind’ smile faded slowly, but it was soon replaced by an almost questioning smirk.

“I’m just a survivor,” he said, his voice hoarse and severely underused, “Just like you are.”

The man turned away with a wave of the hand at the creature who he’d been so comfortable with, and she felt her mouth moving before she’d actually registered whatever the fuck was spewing from her lips.

“Wait, but…”

The nameless man stopped walking, and cocked an ear towards her, allowing her to continue.

“Who exactly are you, man? Because you’re not just _some survivor._ ”

She felt the man smirk. His shoulders raised and lowered in a heavy shrug.

“Just call me Dipper.”

And with that, he limped back into the forest around them, the final creature following close behind.

Natalie D’Moller felt an odd warmth in her chest; quite possibly the first positive feeling she’d felt in thirteen years. It blended with her blood, warming her skin, bones, muscles and everything in between.

Safety, she realised it was.

Natalie smiled.

It felt nice.

* * *

 

This was weird and Dipper was sufficiently confused.

It wasn’t so much what was _happening_ that was confusing, rather, who it was happening _to._

It was a boy, a very young boy, probably only, what, fourteen? Which was impressive, he had to admit, because he was… twenty-five…? Okay, so he’s _pretty sure_ he’s twenty-five this year, and so far he’s been severely abused by the chaos god running this shit show, had to cut off his own foot with a butter knife and a t-shirt between his teeth as his anaesthetic, and been forced to travel all over the world just to look for his stupid sister who he was almost eighty seven percent certain had gotten the entirety of Earth into this situation.

He winced as he thought of Mabel and how he’d just insulted her, though he was pretty sure about that percentage. He _was_ pretty sure Mabel was indeed to blame for this absolute fuckery of an apocalypse.

The kid before him – all knees and elbows, he was – cowered in the corner of the convenience store he’d found the poor kid in. The shelves surrounding them were scattered across the floor, products new and old among them. It was weird, he’d always thought, how some food products were years passed their use-by date, and others were in mint condition. Almost as though it was all a game to Bill.

… Though, to be fair, that wouldn’t surprise Dipper.

He heard the kid behind him whimper, and his knuckles cracked with how hard he was gripping his bat. The being before them was horrific: a gore-y mix of every colour of the rainbow wrapped in a hard-liquor smelling, peeling-skin looking, absolutely maddening creature that may or may not have vaguely resembled a chest of drawers.

Oh, and it had two heads.

Two _doll_ heads.

Can’t forget that.

The Unholy Chest of Drawers stared at them hungrily with its creepy as fuck haunted China doll heads, the empty eyes – or eye, in the case of one of the heads – seeming to peer into their very souls, and Dipper felt a shiver run through both him and the child. He needed to act, and he needed to act fast.

The drawers themselves split open, revealing a black hole of nothing but teeth; shark teeth, human teeth, he even saw a few tusks in there. A tongue, rainbow in colour but dribbling what was probably literally ink, slithered out from the void, forked at the ends and Dipper was amazed to see two other mini-forked-tongues separate from the main muscle.

The boy behind him gasped, and he heard Darla, precious thing, shuffle closer to the kid, hackles raised protectively and snarling like her little life depended on it.

The chest of drawer seemed to cower away from them, and Dipper felt his brow furrow. That was odd behaviour for something that was created from this absolute madness.

Granted, Dipper himself had never seen anything like the actual thing itself – one of the _many joys_ of this _fucking bullshittery –_ but he was at least ninety-nine point nine-nine percent sure that cowering wasn’t in the ‘Living Inanimate Objects’ recipe.

The boy, whose name escaped him, seemed to think so two, as he could pretty much feel their simultaneous head-tilting and brow-furrowing.

Cautiously, Dipper shuffled closer, bat still poised to attack if need be, and he heard the kid lift himself into more of a standing position than a hiding position, heard Darla lessen her snarling to a soft rumble deep down in the depths of her little doggy vocal cords.

His ears prickled with the fresh sound of someone picking up a bladed weapon. So the boy was finally helping him.

But it was curious, see, because the chest of drawers stepped back from them.

Dipper felt the confusion contort his face. _Seriously?_ He thought, a distinct layer of bitterness lacing the rest of his thoughts. _One minute this fucking chest of drawers is all “Come play with me!” in twin creepy voices, dripping literal ink_ – ink! – _all over the lovely tiles of this 7-Eleven, and only_ now _it’s cowering in the fucking corner like some bullshit fuckin’... coward?_

_Little. Fuckin’. Bitch._

The chest of drawers continued to shuffle away from them. Darla made a little huffing bark at the object, but even she seemed a little confused at the dresser’s behaviour. Her second pair of legs slowly retracted back into her stomach, her third eye blinking out of time with the rest, and she ran a tongue over her wet nose.

She moved to approach the object, but Dipper quickly held out a hand to stop her. He was glad she was such an eerily smart dog, and thankful when she listened to him. It was obvious that everyone, in that exact moment that was happening in some shitty messed up 7-Eleven at, like, three p.m in the middle of metric butt-fuck nowhere, was just a _little bit_ on edge.

And that probably wasn’t good.

Slowly but surely, Dipper lowered the bat, the bottom of his shoe scuffing against the tiled floor, his arms dropping to his sides. He could feel the boy’s burning gaze zeroing in on the nape of his neck, felt it bubble his skin and boil his blood with its ferocity. Even Darla, sweet little Darla, was looking at him, not for the first time making him question whether or not she was affected by this hellish Oddpocalypse more than he thought.

The doll heads mounted to the chest of drawers changed their facial expressions to ones of bitter confusion in the blink of an eye, much like how the original Thomas the Tank Engine facial expressions would change, and Dipper knew it was now or never. In one swift movement, he was in front of the object, arms at his side, facial muscles relaxed to their natural state, and whatever hair that wasn’t in the bun it was meant to be in covering his face.

The chest of drawers looked up at him, a puddle of ink pooling in one of its open drawers. The doll faces still had that confusion, though it had lost its bitterness, replaced with raw scepticism. It was watching him closely, judging his every movement, and one of the doll heads parted its porcelain lips.

“Wh̘̦̥a͎̰͇̟̭̠t ̜͉̺͈a͙̦̟r̩e̪͔͈͍ ̘y͉͕̗̭o̦u̫̼͕͚̟̩ ͚͕̬̗̩͎do̩̮͖̭in͇̺̺͎ͅg͖͍͚̖?” it asked, voice ghostly, childish, and two different pitches at once.

Dipper’s lips curled into an unintentionally unsettling smile. He heard the boy take a cautious step back.

“Playing with you.” He replied sweetly. “Don’t you want to play?”

The dolls’ expressions shifted to one of fear as they caught sight of Dipper tightening his grip on his bat.

The dresser itself began backing up.

“W͔̖̼͖e͓̮͎ ̮̺d̪o̞̺n͖̬͖'͕ṯ͎ ̠w̘̺̘̮aṉ̪t̘̬̘͕ ̻̻̭t͖̹o͉ ̲͉̻̝ͅͅp͍͍l̜̥͉͍̫̳̣a̲͉̟̠y a̹̰̻͕ṇ̯̖͙̬̼̥y̠͍͕͖̖m̮o͖̖̱̱̳͉͓r͚̻͚͍e̳̤̩̹͔̫̱!̖̬̞̻̤” the other head said, tone dripping with terror.

Dipper’s smile grew. The poor dresser had backed itself into a corner, much like a frightened animal would.

But he decided to show the tiniest smidge of mercy.

Rather than torturing the poor thing – as he’d originally planned – Dipper flicked his wrist back, flinging the bat into the air. It spun one, two, three times, and he gave the dresser a quick and painless death as he caught the handle of the bat in his other hand and _slammed_ the metal weapon into the expensive, yet still remarkably creepy, china doll heads, sending shards of porcelain everywhere.

Without giving the dresser itself much time to ‘think’, he brought the bat above his head, and proceeded to send it down onto the top of the dresser, the satisfying crash that accompanied it like music to his keen ears. Inky saliva sprayed everywhere, wood mixing with porcelain and every colour of the rainbow colliding with the impressive blackness of the spray.

A clock, somewhere in the shop, ticked away the minutes of silence that settled in the area.

The clicking of Darla’s impressively long nails was what truly broke the silence; not the breathy sobs of the boy Dipper had just saved, nor the final, Earth shattering screech of the being he’d just obliterated completely.

Dipper felt something wet nuzzle him, and he was all too suddenly aware of the heavy bursts of air he was panting out, all too suddenly aware of the adrenaline still pumping painfully through his veins, though he silently relished in that.

Quietly, he turned to the barely-fourteen year old kid behind him. He didn’t say anything as he made eye contact with the boy, didn’t say anything as he looked shamefully back down at his darling dog; he merely turned away from them, motioning for Darla to follow, and let the crunching of hard materials under his fee- _foot_ fill the room with its painful anticlimactic-ness.

He was almost at the door when he paused, Darla right on his metaphorical tail, as a thought struck him. He turned slightly towards the boy whose sobs had quietened to tiny hiccups, and sternly said, “Don’t leave your family again, kid. Not everyone’s gonna come to the rescue.”

He reached out a hand to the door, intent on pushing it open, when a small, meek, underused voice called out an even smaller “Wait.”

He obliged, turning his ear back towards the boy.

He waited.

“… How did you know I’d run away from my family?”

Dipper felt a hesitant smirk curl up the corner of his chapped lips. He pushed open the door, this time with a clear intention of _leaving,_ but he didn’t leave the boy without an answer.

In reply, he merely said, “I just did.”

And with that, he left, on to save the next person-in-need, a heavy atmosphere of silence and grief left behind.

* * *

 

Stanley Pines was getting old.

His bones creaked as he sat down in his armchair. Ah, perfect; forty-three years of doing nothing but sit in that very chair had certainly done wonders to moulding the cushion to fit his body.

He cracked open a can of meat he’d snagged on his way down. A few gnomes sat down at his feet, so he politely handed them the somehow still working TV remote, and watched them get excited at the concept of watching reruns of mindless reality shows meant to pacify young children and, apparently, supernatural creatures.

Heh. Reminded him of Dipper and Mabel, actually.

Quietly, Stan let his head fall back, knocking against the wall with a dull thud, and let his eyes fall closed. It’d been a long, long day of reinstating the Mystery Shack’s barrier as well as he could, but somehow they managed. One of them – the unicorn, he thinks it was – seemed to remember when Mabel, his great niece, had come to her for some hair for the spell. How she actually _knew_ the spell remained a mystery, but if it kept them all safe, he figured he shouldn’t ask.

The Multi-bear, or whatever it was called, slowly crept into the room from the kitchen, a glass of water in one of his mighty paws. His gaze – well, the gaze of his main head – fell on him, and his head bobbed up and down in acknowledgement, before he came to sit down next to Stan.

Stanley sighed. Long ago, this probably would’ve bothered him, having gnomes watch television at his feet, and a, like, seven headed bear sitting next to him, but after thirteen years of dealing with it, it just… wasn’t. He could say he was used to it, used to having a unicorn trot arrogantly around the Shack, used to having Sherriff Blubs and Pacifica fucking Northwest sleep in his rooms or on his living room floors, or Old Man McGucket creeping around in the shadows, a surprisingly silent watcher, but that would be a blatant lie.

He still wasn’t used to it, and, if he was being completely honest with himself, that fact created a feeling of disappointment deep within him, aimed only at himself.

Two sets of hooves stomped through the Shack. They were heavy sounding, falling noisily onto the wooden floors, and he could tell that they were two of those Manotaur things. Stan groaned, low and in the back of his throat; the ‘footsteps’ came closer, travelling through the museum and the gift shop, towards Stan himself, and that meant only one thing.

And he didn’t like it.

Sure enough, a few seconds after he’d initially heard the footsteps, a pair of Manotaurs stood in the doorway, towering over everyone in the room. The gnomes grumbled and shifted at his feet, the volume on the TV rising a few notches, and Stan tried not to acknowledge them.

He nodded at the Manotaurs. “Is it Bill again?”

One of them shook his mighty head. “No, sir, we haven’t seen Bill for a few months, but there’s a weirdness wave headed our way, and we’re almost out of meat. What do you want us to do?”

Stan considered him, looking down at the can of spam in his own hand. Goddamn, he needed to cut back, if his still evident old-man-pot-belly had any say in it.

He ran a wrinkly old hand over his face, his calloused fingers pressing into his eyes and pushing up his glasses. He was beginning to regret opening the Shack to people who needed it. Like seriously, almost all of his damn spam was gone, and he knew for a fact he’d had enough stocked up for a twenty year old apocalypse.

And he would’ve been so close to finishing it in that time frame if he didn’t have other mouths to feed.

Stan sighed and sat back in his chair, rolling the can in his fingers and drumming on the top of the can with his other hand. His gaze slowly moved back to the gnomes all sitting happily at his feet, their eyes not once shifting from the TV, before eventually moving to look back up at the Manotaurs towering over him.

“I’ll see what I can do.” He managed to say, his voice gravelly, breathy, rarely used. The Manotaurs left with nothing more than a nod.

Stan sighed again, a heavy expulsion of air that left him exhausted. His mind had been on those damn kids all day, for some annoying reason, and he could feel himself being noticeably weighed down by the thoughts. They were bad thoughts, heavy thoughts, and they’d plagued him all damn day.

He had no goddamn idea where either of them were. He didn’t even know if they were _alive._ He didn’t even know whether or not he thought they could survive.

There was Dipper, who might’ve had a slight chance, with his small frame that left him as less of a target, and the boy was smart, much like Ford, but he was reckless, too, and had a temper too hot for him to handle. That could get him into a lot of trouble; especially with that insufferable _wit_ of his, but Stan silently hoped that his months of hard labour had toughened the kid up enough to give him a small chance of survival.

And then there was Mabel. She was too… _colourful_ for her own good, in Stan’s opinion. She was never really good at focusing on things, and she had a heart of gold. She couldn’t hurt a fly, literally so how the hell was she supposed to fight those damn monsters crawling around in every nook and cranny of the world? And she didn’t have her brother’s smarts; she was _socially_ smart, but Stan had always gotten the distinct feeling that she’d always had everything handed to her on a silver platter, unlike Dipper. So could she possibly survive the apocalypse?

Stan honest to God didn’t think so.

The old man shuddered at the thought. To think that Mabel wouldn’t be able to survive the apocalypse… and coupled with the fact that he had no idea where either of them were…

It chilled him to the core to think about it.

Thankfully, he was soon pulled out of his thoughts as someone called his name. The calling was quickly accompanied by the heavy footfalls of someone on a mission, thumping across the poor quality yard, the person who called him probably sprinting towards the Shack.

“Stan! Stan holy shit – sorry man, didn’t mean to do that! – holy _shit_ Stan you gotta fucking see this!” A young voice cried, and a minute later, Wendy came rushing in, crumpled piece of paper in one hand and jar of Nutella in the other.

She was panting heavily, her chest heaving, and she flipped her long braid over her shoulder, wiping away the sweat on her brow with the back of her gloved hand. She strode over to Stan and sniffed, her eyes darting to the can of meat in his hand, but she shook her head, bringing herself to the reason she’d come back in such a hurry.

“Stan,” she said, and the stern-ness of her voice made Stan set down the can of food and cut off the TV, the disgruntled gnomes shuffling out quietly with a dismissive wave. “You seriously gotta see this.”

Wendy slammed the piece of paper down on his lap, and he shot her a glare before actually picking it up, but she continued talking before he got a chance to read it.

“So these were out on the street, right, they were just scattered everywhere – I kinda wanna know how they found the stuff to make this because I’m honestly a little impressed, but seriously, they were everywhere! Legit everywhere! I saw them when I was raiding the Dusk 2 Dawn – y’know, that haunted convenience store that never seems to run out of supplies for some reason – and so I picked one up and just – you just gotta read it man!”

He stared at her, confused, but there was an excited glint in her eyes that made him turn his attention to the piece of paper she’d oh so eloquently slammed onto his laps.  

It was all jumbled.

Stan readjusted his glasses, but alas, nothing.

He turned slowly towards Wendy, but her face was patient as she quietly took the paper from his shaking hands.

“Okay okay,” she said, voice rushed. “So it says here some shit you might find interesting.”

Wendy cleared her throat and began to read.

“ _’New vigilante instills fear into the eyes of the creatures now plaguing our world’_ ,” she began, her breathing still heavy. “ _’Identifiable by an odd birthmark on his forehead and a mutated dog follower, the Red Dipper is truly making marks as he travels the world helping others in need.’_ ”

Wendy slowly lifted her gaze to meet Stan’s, and a grin split her face in half. She was buzzing with glee, visibly appearing to be holding back in excitedly jumping up and down.

“Stan! Stan, it’s _Dipper!_ It’s literally Dipper! Oh my god I’m channelling my inner Mabel but _seriously Stan, it’s fucking Dipper!”_

Her eyes welled with tears, and her throat bobbed as she swallowed thickly, the smile never fading.

“Stan, he’s _alive!”_

The old man felt his eyes begin to sting, and he blinked a few times in a fruitless attempt to clear the water works he knew were coming soon. He could feel his entire body begin the shake with the overwhelming wave of emotions he was flooded with, and he lifted a hand to remove his glasses.

 _“Alive,”_ he breathed, the word swimming with disbelief. “He’s _alive.”_

The grin that followed that exact realisation hurt his cheeks.

There was a heavy _clank_ as the can of spam fell from his fingers. The kid was _alive,_ dammnit, he was _fucking alive!_

Slowly, Stan turned to face Wendy, who was beaming at him. He gave her a genuine smile, excitement warming his ancient bones and his shrivelled heart swelling with relief.

“You know what this means, right?” He said, and her smile faded a bit as her brow furrowed.

Stan turned to the blank TV, his own smile fading into one of seriousness.

“We gotta go find the damn kid.”

He slipped a hand between the couch cushions at his right hip, his fingers wrapping around the grip of the sawed off shotgun he kept there, and he brought it out, cocking it with a satisfying _ca-chink._

A hand, smooth, feminine, but worn with experience, settled on his shoulder, and he turned to see Wendy’s face set in an expression that mixed concern with seriousness and left him setting the weapon onto his old lap.

“Stan,” she said, her voice lacking the previous excitement. “We don’t know if Mabel’s alive.”

Stan considered her for a moment. He sighed, his nostrils expanding slightly.

“We have one kid, Wendy,” he replied, and he could almost feel his gaze harden. “That’s pretty damn good.”

Wendy’s face softened, and she smiled, considering his remark. He knew he was right; so did she.

Quickly, Stan let out a sharp whistle that echoed through the shack. All at once, everyone was in the living room: mythical creatures and humans alike.

“Alright, folks,” he bellowed, putting on his ‘leader voice’. Everyone waited in anticipation as to what he was going to say; was it Bill again? Was it another raiding mission? None of them knew.

The old geezer smirked, relishing in the anxiety that washed over the room.

“Who wants to come get Dipper?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk how i feel about this one???? tbh??? whatever tho, yknow?
> 
> anyways, tell me what y'all think! i like waking up to nice comments and kudos :)
> 
> my [tumblr](http://pedoseidon.tumblr.com/)


	7. CHAPTER TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello! it hasn't been too long, has it? i hope not!
> 
> trigger warnings for several anxiety attacks. there's not too much gore in this one, but there is some flashbacks that might be a little disturbing, but if you've made it this far, don't even worry bro
> 
> anyways, enjoy, i guess
> 
> edit: took me a while to notice i had the year wrong, so if anyone noticed it before i did pls dont comment i know my mistake i know my shame. im sorry

**_ 2025_**

She hated the apocalypse and everything it brought with it.

But the constant dirty clothes had to take the cake when it came to her list of ‘Small Things I Hate About The Apocalypse Most Of All Because They’re So Inconvenient I Hate Them So Much Why’.

Olivia’s feet ached as she sprinted through the beaten mall of whatever town she was in right now. The glass dome windows above them were shattered, the glass itself littering the tiled floors at their feet, their boots crushing the shards with a satisfying _crunch._

Her knee hurt. She regretted trying to pull some epic anime move against the last creature she killed; she’d landed awkwardly on the asphalt of the road they’d just come off of her ended up scraping her knee and tearing her jeans in the process.

And she was weirdly attached to those jeans, too, so while she wasn’t _devastated,_ she was still kinda disappointed.

A gap in one of those gates stores use when closing caught her eye, and she felt her ankle protest loudly as she changed direction to go towards it. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but she recognised the store as a clothing store – a unisex one, too, thank fuck – and even though it quite literally pained her to, she knew it was about time she changed her clothes. There was mud and blood and holes and even the remnants of various drinks they’d manage to score all over her current attire, and Elijah’s weren’t looking the best, either.

Besides, she’d noticed they were a little more _form fitting_ lately, the tight denim fabric almost constricting her movements.

Which, as any other survivor of this god forsaken apocalypse would say, is _Not Good._

Olivia carefully slowed to a jog the closer they came to the shop, her shin sticky with drying blood and a solid breeze only making it worse. Elijah ran up beside her, a string of swear words already on his tongue, his breathing uncomfortably wheezy.

“Fuck, Libby,” he said, the two of them crawling under the small gap. Olivia’s knee spiked with pain. “Jesus, I forgot how fast you were.”

She couldn’t help but smile a little at that. Thirteen years and she was still faster than him.

They pulled down the gate behind them. Granted, it wasn’t the _best_ defense, but if it bought them five to ten extra minutes of ‘clothes shopping’, they’d absolutely take it.

Elijah dusted off his hands with a few claps and turned to her. “C’mon, Libs, let’s go find some clothes or whatever.”

They turned together. For the most part, the store was actually in pretty good condition.

It was split into two sides, male and female, with semi-folded clothes spread across tables and scattered on the floor. There were racks along the walls filled with, well, more clothes, and a few detached ones that were floating around the store; a couple were knocked over.

Yep, they should find something in here.

Elijah made a beeline for the men’s clothes, his brow furrowing as he scooped up – and quickly inspected – the first shirt and jeans he found, instantly trying to find his size in the sporadic mix of clothing that was currently covering sections of the store’s wooden floors.

Olivia quietly made her way to the other half. For some reason, she found it kind of sad that she never had a chance to argue with her mother about things as silly as clothes. She was young when this whole mess first blew over, only about eight or nine, so she really missed being able to do basic teenage girl things, like shop for clothes for hours on end, or talk about boys – or girls, she wasn’t fussed – with a big group of girlfriends, or be grossed out by whatever sex ed video they were going to show them in high school, or getting to ask her own mother about how periods worked.

She was still trying to work that one out.

(It was a work in progress.)

Olivia sighed and ran a hand across all the dresses she could’ve worn if Weirdmageddon hadn’t happened. She wondered what her style would’ve been. What type of job she would have. What type of _friends_ or _partners_ she’d have.

Would she even have any?

Something crashed into the weird closing gate, sending a legitimate shockwave through the store. Elijah twisted around, his head half in a t-shirt head hole and his jeans unbuttoned, and Olivia would’ve laughed if she hadn’t very suddenly run out of a whole lot of time.

Again.

She didn’t really think about what came next; all she knew was that she grabbed the first two items of clothing she saw – a pair of overalls that were, shockingly, in her size, and a dark red shirt that she could just tell was going to be way too big on her – and sprint-limped as fast as she could to the back of the shop to get changed.

“Elijah,” she called, and he quickly corrected his clothes at her tone. “Get back here and help me out of my jeans!”

She’d already pulled her pants halfway down her thighs when he finally slid over. He ripped off her shoes for her, hastily grabbing at the ankles of her jeans and ripping them off, too, as she pulled her gross as fuck shirt off over her head.

She hissed when the denim rubbed against the wound in her knee. She needed a bandage or something, dammnit!

Elijah glanced up at her hiss of pain, but both of them knew that they didn’t have enough time to get a bandage, and while it absolutely sucked to have to sprint around with _denim_ rubbing against an _open wound,_ like many things that were the product of this absolute shit storm, Olivia was just going to have to live with it.

Olivia threw on the three-sizes-too-big shirt with a fair amount of haste, the shirt swallowing her tiny frame with its red-ness. The overalls were a little harder, what with having to clip them over her shoulders, but honestly, it was worth it, if it meant being out of her previous pair of jeans.

Besides, she wasn’t blind; she knew how unsurprisingly _rare_ jeans were nowadays.

The apocalypse’ll do that, she guessed.

The thing outside the door slammed into the gate with a slam hard enough to actually dent the metal. Both of them jumped, Elijah diving desperately for his backpack, extracting the giant sword of a baker’s knife he held dear to his heart, and Olivia trying almost just as desperately to pull her damn boots back on.

Olivia herself pulled her own pack closer, quickly removing the very heavy – and very wooden – cricket bat from where she’d very haphazardly shoved the handle through a hole. It clunked on the floor with a loud _thud,_ scaring the shit out of Elijah, and honestly, she would’ve laughed at his reaction, if it weren’t for their current situation.

Elijah shakily shoved his cracked glasses up further onto the bridge of his nose.

Another slam in the gate. Another dent appeared at the same time.

Her knuckles tightened around the handle of her bat. The atmosphere was so thick and _tingly,_ like one of those really itchy blankets her grandma always seemed to give her. It was suffocating, like a turtleneck, constricting her throat and making her gasp for air. Her face was sweaty, her neck was sweaty, her armpits were sweaty, and it was mostly because of the overwhelming ‘ _magic’_ that seemed to visibly trickle in from under the gate.

Her eyes widened a fraction. She hated the apocalypse.

Elijah came and crouched carefully next to her. He’d seemed to drain out the atmosphere surrounding them, from the choking fear that seemed to swallow both of them whole, to the rhythmic slams as whatever was on the other side of the closing gate thing tried to get in.

He placed a hand on her shoulder, and she was suddenly very much aware of how close to hyperventilating she was, warm tears cutting through the mask of mud and at least two different types of blood covering her face and burning the slowly-turning-into-a-tan sunburn that had made a home on her cheeks. Her entire body felt unbearably warm and cold at the same time, her arms cold and her hands numb and shaking from were one of them was wrapped in a bandage.

She choked on a laugh. She always seemed to get hurt.

A tear fell from her chin with a wet _plop,_ the sound the first of many like it. She remembered a few years ago when she’d first gotten her period, halfway through the apocalypse – convenient, isn’t it? – and she’d thought she was dying so she started bawling her eyes out. All that time spent trying to survive, only to have it all come crashing down with something that was probably totally natural?

Who wouldn’t cry?

But ever since then, she remembered, she hadn’t cried quite like that since. She remembered how comically freaked out Elijah was, and he was so scared he started crying, too.

And around the same time she’d started steadily growing boobs, and acne, and Elijah started getting everything that came with being a guy during puberty, and while she doesn’t remember the point of this thought, she remembered how funny it was, and how much it sucked to have to go through puberty while also having to survive Weirdmageddon.

She wiped under her eyes with shaky fingers. She didn’t feel like she was slowly drowning anymore, which was nice, but unfortunately that hadn’t stopped the whatever-it-was from trying to get to them.

Olivia sucked in a slow and wobbly breath, and exhaled just as slowly. Her fingernails dug into her bandaged palm as she clenched and unclenched her fist, her chest heaving with the slow, deliberate breaths she was taking.

Just as slowly as she breathed, Olivia placed both hands on the floor in front of her and stood. Her legs felt a little unstable, and her neck still felt tight, but for the most part, she was glad she was able to calm down a little so quickly.

Elijah stood from his crouch, his hand hovering over her shoulder, knife slack at his side. She looked at him.

He quirked an eyebrow in question.

Olivia only shook her head back.

They both turned towards the gate. It was almost completely dented in.

_Oh, god, I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die right here right now and no, I’ve been surviving for too damn long to die today, so even if I am gonna die, I’m not going down without a fucking fight._

A rush of heat flooded her veins, her heartbeat quickening, her palms going sweaty, her grip on the bat tightening. She felt distant and sharp all at once; her eyes cleared, but her head was still foggy. She could hear better, but she could hear her very loud and very fast heartbeat at the same time as everything else, and whether or not all these feelings were related to the near anxiety attack she’d just had or whether they were a part of something else entirely, she honestly couldn’t tell.

The balls of her feet dug into the floorboards, and with a feeling she could only describe as ‘sheer willpower’, Olivia _threw_ herself forward, breaking into a sprint and beelining for the gate.

She could hear Elijah choke on his own exasperation, the _thunk, thunk, thunk_ of his boots against the floor already at her heels, but at that moment, she felt like there was nothing in the world that could stop her; not the aching cramps that festered themselves in her lower abdomen, not the uncomfortable warmth of a probably too old pad cuddling up to her crotch, and certainly not the monster that was only a by-product of the mess around them on the other side of the gate.

Was the adrenaline rush she was having a good thing?

Probably not, but hey, she could fight, like, four weird-bears right now. She didn’t care.

But when the slamming suddenly stopped, so did Olivia.

There was… something going on on the other side of the gate. The slamming had stopped, sure, but there were other noises coming from the other side, and it stopped her ever-growing adrenaline rush right in its tracks. She was at a complete and utter loss, and even though it wasn’t exactly registering in her still anxiety-slash-adrenaline-fogged mind, she had a vague idea that she was.

Then a high pitched wailing broke out from the other side and Olivia felt her heart metaphorically dropped.

It felt like she was drowning in ice water, the wailing was so horrible. It made the unbearable tightness of the already overwhelming atmosphere worse, constricting her heart and making it feel like a phantom hand was squeezing her soul, and it felt like a continuous stream of rapidly melting ice was trickling into her veins, chilling her blood and sending uncontrollable shivers down her spine.

Her knees felt wobbly. Her hands were shaking. None of that was good.

There was a quick-fire series of onomatopoeias barely registered in her haze of a mind, the wailing accompanied by several shrieks, cries, and screams, but she just wanted it to stop, stop, _stop._ She couldn’t take how much was happening; everything that had happened in the past half hour – or maybe it was everything that had happened in the last thirteen years, she wasn’t too sure on that – was overwhelming her, and she slapped her hands over her ears as she felt so many goddamn things at once. The lingering adrenaline and anxiety, the chills of the wails, the suffocating atmosphere; it was all just _too fucking much._

Olivia watched as the silhouette of a drawer of some sort was created in the dented metal in front of her, and a sudden pressure was lifted from her head.

The wailing must’ve stopped, she figured, so with much hesitation, she removed her hands from her ears.

It had, thank fuck.

Her shoulders rose and dropped with the heavy breath of relief she heaved, but it was reasonably short lived as the surprisingly underwhelming question of _‘Should we go check it out?’_ was exchanged between her and Elijah with nothing but a head-tilted look.

Elijah shrugged. They both did. But, as their mothers had always taught them, _when in doubt, fuck it._

They simultaneously turned back to the beaten gate. They hoped whatever had just saved them from the cluster of monsters outside was at least a little friendly.

Together, the two stepped forward, both reaching down to grab the bottom of the gate, their fingers curling and locking into place. They weren’t even sure if this was going to work, considering the state of the metal and how bent out of place it was, but their mothers didn’t raise quitters, so with a whispered countdown from three, they prepared to heft the gate up, only to be cut off by a voice from the other side.

“Hey, Darla,” a young man who couldn’t be much older than them said, and the click of nails against the tiled floor of the shopping centre was the only response they got. “Wanna try busting it open for me?”

Something huffed what could’ve been a bark in answer.

The scraping closed in on them, tell-tale dog pants drawing nearer, and they watched with stupendously mixed emotions as a set of jaws locked into the metal.

The grooved and excessively damaged metal was pulled out of place, going in on itself from their perspective, and they both had to admit that it was pretty cool to watch. The creature on the other side seemed to struggle, tugging and pulling with unnatural strength, but with a lot of perseverance, whatever was in the other side – a good something this time, they hoped – literally pulled a giant chunk of metal out of the gate.

Just fucking pulled it right out.

The two glanced at each other. Somehow, they’d both managed to end up on separate sides of the recent hole, and with a cautiousness only really possible for a survivor like them, they peeked out of the hole and out to the outside world.

There, right in the centre of the hole, stood a tall, overly dishevelled young man, and an extremely mutated… animal. Thing. Creature. _Whatever._

They were surrounded by six bodies, each one an unresponsive by-product of Weirdmageddon itself.

The man stared at them. Scratch at his unsurprisingly thick beard. He was quite muscular, with warm brown eyes, long, curly brown hair tied up into a bun at the back of his head, and more than a few scars scattered across his patchy tanned skin. He wasn’t wearing anything too outrageous; just a graphic tee with a little alien in the breast, a coat that looked several sizes too big, and a pair of jeans that had definitely been through some serious shit. Olivia noticed with some amusement that he only had one foot – his only foot clad in a standard combat boot that looked pretty beat up – but that definitely wasn’t the most noticeable part of him.

No. The most noticeable part about this mystery man would have to be what looked like a birthmark of the Big Dipper right in the middle of his forehead.

Elijah swallowed audibly next to her. He seemed, oddly enough, to recognise that there was something off about the man; sure, she had noticed something weird was going on, too, but maybe she was still a little too dazed to care.

The man cleared his throat as he scratched his stomach through his shirt. Slowly, he bowed his head towards them, a simple nod of acknowledgement.

She returned it. Mostly because she was sure her mother would beat her from the grave if she wasn’t polite, but if she was being entirely truthful, she genuinely didn’t think that the apocalypse was a good excuse for having bad manners.

The man smiled. It was a weirdly nice smile, considering the strange glint of what was either insanity or mischief in his eyes, and she saw no harm in returning it as she took a step forward. The dog – if she could even call it that, taking into account that it had six legs, three eyes, and two tails – came up next to the man and sat down, a silent guard as it sat rim-rod straight with its ears to her and Elijah.

Carefully, Olivia stepped through the hole. If she was going to thank the man for saving their lives, she was at least going to show him the courtesy of showing she trusted him a little.

“Thanks for saving us,” she said, her voice cracking through dehydration. “We probably would’ve been dead if it weren’t for you.”

The man moved to say something, but he was quite quickly cut off as Elijah came through the hole to join her.

“Yeah man, thanks a heap.” He said, his voice not as steady as she would’ve thought, and she had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t just because he was still a bit shaken from what just happened.

The man only continued smiling. “No problem.” His voice was rough and weak, a wary whisper.

He turned, making to leave, the dog following close behind, and she felt something weird spread across her body. Content or something? She couldn’t quite pin it.

The two friends watched the man go. Turned towards the shop they’d just come out of.

Olivia turned back to where the man had been, her gaze drifting over every little detail of the scene before them.

She sighed.

They should probably find a supermarket.

At least then she’ll be able to stock up on some pads.

* * *

 

Dipper felt wrong.

He felt wrong and bad and cold and warm and hot and burning and _itchy,_ why was he itchy?

His leg – his _stump_ hurt. It was aching, a constant, white hot throbbing that made him gasp for air and forced him to sit down.

His eyes were itchy and his vision was blurring. The pain was so intense, and it reminded him of all those years ago when Bill-

_Torture, torture, torture. Stretching and pulling and hot hot **hot** and cutting and blood and red and red and blue and yellow and wet wet drip drip all down the walls. Constant, constant, constant pain click click of heels, click click of nails, click click of fingers._

_Black hands and black arms stretching towards him and burning his skin, boiling his blood, and hurting and stinging and stretching and prickling and cutting slicing mincing dicing-_

His skin felt like it was on fire. His chest hurt. His mouth was dry and his throat felt like it was being ripped apart from the inside out every time he swallow. He was tired and it was hurting him, just like everything else, and it hurt and he wanted it to stop, why couldn’t he get it to stop?

He felt wrong and it wasn’t going away. He felt like not-himself, he felt like he was drowning in lava and water and a sea of broken glass – _screaming no please stop it hurts no –_ and it hurt and he just wanted it to stop but he couldn’t, not until Bill-

_Wet squelch squishy in his mouth and c **rac** k of bones and white hot in his leg and it hurts, it hurts, make it stop, make it stop, make it –_

A warm hand settled on his shoulder. He blinked away the tears. He looked up. There was a woman looking at him. Why was she looking at him?

The woman’s face was concerned. Scared. Worried. Why?

“Sir?” The woman called. Her voice was nice. It made Dipper feel nice.

“Sir, are you okay?”

Dipper laughed. He wasn’t okay. Not since Bill-

 _\- stOP PLEASE I WANT IT TO STOP I DON’T LIKE IT WHY WON’T IT STOP PLEASE JUST **STOP**_ –

had had his way with him. Not since he’d been tortured in the Fearamid for however long he was in there, he couldn’t remember, and not since he’d been sent on this gods forsaken quest to find his own sister. Mabel. That was her name. He should call her by her name.

Dipper slapped himself on the thigh. “Stupid.”

The woman lifted his head by grabbing his chin. He didn’t even remember dropping his head, but then again, he didn’t remember a lot of things.

His chest still hurt. It felt all tight and bad and wrong.

The woman turned to a child and said something he didn’t quite hear. The child ran off. The woman turned back to him. She sat down, her knees getting dirty, and he felt a weird stab of guilt.

He seemed to be feeling a lot right now. That didn’t seem right.

The child came back holding a bowl of something-

 _Demon blood. It’s demon blood. It’s demon blood and broken glass and they’re going to make him eat it and oh god it hurts so fucking much why does it **hurt** please just make it stop make it stop makeitstopstops **top**_ –

Dipper scrambled away, the heels of his hands digging into the muddy grass below. Dewdrops soaked his pants the more he moved away from the two strangers, his focus solely on the bowl of whatever in the child’s hands, and his vision was blurring again.

The woman shouted something at the child, but he couldn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears. He choked on a sob, feeling his eyes scrunch up and his nose begin to run, feeling his brow furrow and an onslaught of elephant tears cutting through the mess of caked mud and various splatters of miscellaneous stuff, feeling his fingernails dig into his dirty palms as he finally stopped to clench and unclench his fists repeatedly.

The woman crawled a bit closer to him, gesturing for the child to follow. Dipper felt fingers tangle in his hair, felt something pull at his scalp, and, beneath everything else he was feeling, he felt his lips move to form words, to form a constant mantra of _please, no, no more glass, no more blood, I can’t take it, please, no, I just can’t take it!_

His mind was dangerously muddled as the woman carefully set a hand on her shoulder, her gaze pulling his in and locking it in place, and she said something to the child. The child pulled something out of the bowl, and Dipper flinched. The woman took the weird object from the child and gently, so gently and motherly and with so much caution that he felt a dull pang of guilt stab at his already constricting heart, she took his hand, prying it open so it was palm up.

She pressed the weird object into his hand. It was wet-

 _Wet like the blood that coated the walls like paint, all neon and red and dribbling down down down onto the floor and mingling with pools other miscellaneous fluids that were his and hers and theirs and xirs and Bill’s too, Bill’s weird unknown fluids were there too and oh god Bill with the torturing and the glass and the blood and the wet and the pain pain **p a i n**_ –

He let out a sound that made his throat burn like – like something that really hurt, he couldn’t describe the pain but it made his throat burn and that wasn’t good. His back slammed into one of the many, many trees that surrounded them as he threw himself away from the cold wet object that may have been a towel, he realised, but he was too out of it to _realise_ it, the sheer force of the collision knocking the wind out of him and making the, what was it, anxiety attack – he was going with anxiety attack – so much fucking worse.

The woman quickly removed it from his palm and threw the towel(?) towards the child, who caught it and placed it back in the bowl, and she told the child to go away, but a bit more politely than that. The weight of her hand returned to his shoulder, but it was on both shoulders now. It felt nice.

The woman spoke low and very deliberately. “You’re going to get through this.”

Her voice was warm in the scribbled sea flooding his mind, and he relished in it.

She sighed through her nose, but it wasn’t the kind that made him feel guilty for taking up her precious time – which he kinda was, and he did feel bad about it, but it wasn’t the sigh itself that made him feel guilty – it was the kind of sigh that was just that. A sigh.

The woman pulled his focus onto her, and he could see her chest heaving with slow, heavy breaths out of the bottoms of his eyes.

“Sir,” she said, her voice calm and steady, “I need you to breathe with me, okay?”

Dipper must’ve nodded, because she sucked in a very heavy breath.

He tried to copy her, but it was shaking, and it didn’t really work, but he exhaled when she did.

“Okay, that’s good.” Another inhale. “Just keep following me.” Another exhale.

He was a little steadier, actually managing to get some air in and past his tight throat.

“In,” Inhale, “Out.” Exhale.

He wasn’t shaky, but his breaths were still short. He tried harder, his brow furrowing as he concentrated solely on this strange woman.

“In,” Inhale, “Out.” Exhale.

His mind was clearing a little. He still felt the lingering phantom pains of the events that happened however many years ago, still felt like he was drowning, but he overall just felt a tad more lucid.

“In,” Inhale, “Out.” Exhale.

It was weird to him that just a few long breaths could change so much, but with that last exhale, it was almost like he physically felt his mind clear and a blanket of lucidity cloak his mind. His heartbeat was still going a mile a fucking minute, and he still felt overwhelmed to all fucking hell, but just being able to breathe a little better seemed to have helped a metric fuckton.

 _‘It’s the little things that make the most difference’_ or something philosophical along those lines.

The woman smiled, showing crooked teeth, and it was a lovely, genuine smile, which was a bit odd in Dipper’s mostly honest opinion.

Odd? Yeah, that sounded about right.

The woman brought a hand down on top of his own, and he jolted, only sparing a quick glance down before staring back at her. Her chapped lips moved to form sentences, her vocal chords visibly vibrated to form sound for the sentences, and she was talking slowly.

“My name is Nina,” she said, and her head titled to the side as she leaned in a little closer, “What’s yours?”

Dipper smacked his lips in an attempt to form words; and while he managed, they were broken, stuttering, and quiet.

“Dipper,” he whispered, his voice so quiet _he_ wasn’t even sure he’d actually spoken, “My name’s Dipper.”

The woman’s – Nina’s – eyes flickered up to his exposed birthmark. He may have cringed.

But she just smiled warmly. “Nice to meet you, Dipper.”

He only nodded back.

Slowly, Nina positioned herself so she was sitting cross-legged in front of him. He hugged his knees – when had that happened? – tighter to his chest.

“You might not believe this,” she said, her hand removing itself from his own and settling into her lap, “But I used to be a therapist before this whole mess blew over.”

Her eyes, piercing blue and contrasting pleasantly with her dark – _dark_ dark, not like, _apocalypse tan_ dark – skin. She quirked up an eyebrow, her lips parting as she watched his every movement.

“And I know PTSD when I see it.” She shook her head. Her eyebrows furrowed with disbelief. “Something seriously messed up happened to you, man, if you had that bad of an attack.”

Dipper remained silent for a few seconds. Minutes. Moments. Whatever came next.

Eventually, he just sighed. It turned into a chuckle, one of those chuckles that shook your stomach and sent you into stitch-inducing laughter.

“You might be a therapist,” Dipper chose his words carefully, genuine fear shaking his laughter as it trailed into sobs. “But I don’t think you could handle the absolute fucking shit I’ve been through.”

Nina placed a hand on his knee; a comforting weight.

Together, they just sat, Dipper’s sobs filling the silence, the sound of children playing somewhere in the distance.

Who would’ve guessed that Dipper would find a friend in a rare moment of sanity?

* * *

 

To Stan, it felt like every single fucking hand shot up the second the words had left his mouth, but really, he knew he was exaggerating.

In reality, there was a solid two minutes of silence as the words seemed to sink in, but once they did, the room absolutely exploded in a whole variety of cheers and outbursts of what may have been triumph but honestly, Stan wasn’t fucking sure. Like, in the _slightest._

Wendy punched him gently in the shoulder, and he turned towards her. There was a certain ferocity in her eyes that meant she was coming along whether he liked it or not, and he scanned the room. To say everyone was eager would be an understatement, but Stan knew they couldn’t all come along.

He’d have to carefully select a team to go get Dipper.

Though if Stan was being completely honest with himself – which he normally wasn’t – he wasn’t sure _he_ could go along for the ride. He was a senior citizen, that much was obvious, and while he could certainly take on a cluster of Weirdness Wave influenced creatures by himself, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to make the trip.

And judging by how much Dipper apparently travelled nowadays, Stan could tell it was going to be long and _perilous._

Jeez. What a _Ford_ word.

Maybe he was older than he thought.

Stan leant back in his chair and cleared his throat. A bustling quiet had settled over the legitimate crowd, and every gaze was on him, full of equal amounts of eagerness and solid anxiety.

“Unfortunately,” he began, his voice echoing across the Shack itself. “Not all of you can go.”

A ripple of groans cut through the silence, but he knew they understood. Reluctantly, sure, but they understood nonetheless.

“So I have to make a team that’s best suited to go on the trip.”

Slowly, he scanned each and every individual in the room, deciding which one would be, as he said, best suited to make the trip.

First and most obviously, there was Wendy. She was a dedicated fighter who had stuck by his side for over thirteen years, and really, he didn’t have a choice as to whether or not she was going or not. She was familiar for Dipper, too, and maybe, just maybe, her still somehow soft personality and familiar physical features would make bringing Dipper back a bit easier.

Then there was Soos. While not the brightest, just like Wendy, he was familiar, having known the kids ever since the First Summer, and from what he’d seen, he was actually a decent fighter. Sure, he didn’t have quite the stamina and strength of Wendy, but Stan had a feeling Soos wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He might see Stan as the ultimate authority – and god knows why; even Stan knew he wasn’t the best role model, and Weirdmageddon hadn’t helped that fact – but he was determined as hell when it came to things he really wanted.

And then the next to fairly obvious choices were Candy and Grenda, Mabel’s best friends from when she was still here. They were both impressive warriors, with Grenda’s extreme strength and brute force going quite nicely with Candy’s extreme agility and general cunning. Stan knew they would both make valuable assets to the team, and he had this theme of familiarity going on, so he was weirdly glad that that filtered into the mix, too.

And finally, the Manotaurs could go. Mostly because he was kinda sick of them and knew they’d be better making the trip than being cooped up in the Shack any longer. So they were on the team, too.

Stan raised a wrinkled hand to silence the chatter that had grown amongst the crowd, and with a shaky voice, he called out the members that would make up what he was now calling the “Dipper Rescue” team.

Not the most creative, but it would have to do.

“Okay, so the team is going to be made up of Wendy, Soos, Candy, Grenda, and the Manotaurs.” There were varying reactions, but he continued anyway. “You all stay behind and we’ll talk details. Northwest and McGucket, you stay behind too.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “You can all leave now.”

Those who weren’t asked to stay back filtered out of the room, muttering to each other quietly. Probably complaining. Not that he cared.

The Northwest girl looked at him with a mixed expression of confusion and distaste. She pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, so I can understand why your little team was left behind, but I don’t understand why I’m here.”

Stan sighed. If he didn’t need her at the Shack, he would’ve sent her off with the others for being annoying as fuck.

“Because I need someone who’s good with technology because we need communicators of some sort and you’re probably the only person in here who would have any idea how to sort that out.” He nodded to McGucket. “Well, you and McGucket over there.”

McGucket remained silent. Stan appreciated that. The Northwest girl only rolled her eyes.

Stan turned to the trip team.

“You guys should know what to do; spend a few days trying to find Dipper, tail him for a while, and then go in for the kill. But,” he glanced at Wendy, “We don’t know where he is. Wendy,” she perked up at her name, “Does it say where he might be on that weird flier of yours?”

Wendy’s brow furrowed. She held up the flier in front of her and skimmed over it.

She slowly nodded. “Yeah, it says he was last seen heading our way, actually. He was last seen around Idaho, near Montana.”

Stan sighed. Cracked his fingers absentmindedly in thought.

“Okay, okay, that’s good, that means he’s close.”

He snapped his gaze back up.

“Now that we have some idea where Dipper is, I want all of you to start packing. Pack whatever you possibly can; weapons, clothes, food, water, whatever the fuck you want, I don’t _care._ Just remember that it’s not a short trip, and be prepared for everything.”

They all nodded and moved to leave, but Stan stopped them.

“Just,” he sighed, swallowing around the sudden lump of _emotion_ (ugh) forming in his throat. “Just remember that we haven’t seen the kid in thirteen years. We have no idea what kind of shit he’s seen or been through, we have no idea how much he’s changed, and we have no idea if he’ll recognise you all immediately. So just…” he looked down at his hands. He hated showing emotion. “Just be careful.”

They all looked at each other. Once again turned to leave.

Stan called a final remark at their turning backs. “Try to get a good night’s sleep. God knows you all fucking need it.”

They filtered out, the girls going one way and the men/Manotaurs going the other.

Stan ran a hand down his face, just as a big fat tear dripped onto his lap.

He sniffed.

Of course the first chance he’d had in thirteen years to get one of those damn kids back he’d have so many doubts they physically _hurt._

Another sniff.

He just hoped they were okay.

He just hoped they were _alive._

That was all that mattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly? i'm not too happy with this chapter.
> 
> maybe i'm just salty because i had to research so much for this chapter. like legit. my search history is fucked now. the sacrifices i make for you people
> 
> but yeah, idk, i just think the ending isn't too good and it's kinda sloppy imo, but its like 11pm and i've been writing this chapter for legit like three days straight. i missed sleep for this damn fic. i spent like four days tryna work out a realistic weapon to find in a shopping centre during the apocalypse would be (spoiler: not a really good gun!!!! im fuckin lookin at you video games) and even more time asking people what they thought 'typical apocalypse attire' would be.
> 
> but enough about me, i wanna hear your opinions! so if you have an opinion, be sure to comment it down below! i like waking up to comments :D
> 
> my [tumblr](pedoseidon.tumblr.com), if you're interested


	8. CHAPTER THREE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this entire chapter is a (REALLY LATE IM SORRY) mess and i apologise profusely.
> 
> uhhh warning for mentions of trypophobia ('fear' of holes arranged in like a hive-like shape, wouldn't recommend looking it up, there's pictures and i don't want to accidentally trigger any of you or something along those lines), the usual gore, and lots of nudity.
> 
> like... ho boy nudity.
> 
> but anyways, enjoy!

**_ 2025 _ **

All she wanted was a shower. That’s it.

Allie’s clothes stuck to her, caked with a filthy concoction of… filth, and she genuinely struggled to remove them. She’d managed to stumble across what she could only describe as a rich person suburb, and by some blessing from the heavens, one of the houses had water.

Clean. Functional. _Water._

And that water just so happened to go to the shower of the home.

Fucking score.

Bit by bit, Allie peeled each item of clothing from her body, starting with her shirt and moving down. She toed off her shoes, took off her socks, her torn leggings, and her incredibly old underwear.

She was going to enjoy the first shower she’s had in about four years. She was going to wash her hair and brush it and comb it and she’s going to exfoliate her body and clean her crotch and she’s going to have the best damn hygiene this side of the fucking country.

Sure, she might get killed in the process, but it’d be fucking worth it.

The water was boiling as it rained down onto the tiled bottom of the shower, the water cutting through the solid layer of dust accumulating on the floor, and she had enough mind to at least wipe some of it away.

Allie threw the towel out of the shower with a fair amount of disgust, and slowly, she stepped into the luscious stream of water cascading from the fully functional shower head.

The water was _beautiful_ against her skin.

It was hot, the first solid warmth she’d felt in what felt like an eternity. Sure, they’d had summers, as Weirdmageddon hadn’t necessarily changed the world’s abilities to change seasons, but the weather was like… it was like one day would be blistering hot, the next day would be bucketing down with ice cold rain.

Today was, unfortunately, an ice cold rain day.

Allie relished in the way the borderline boiling water cut through the layer of miscellaneous dried fluids covering her skin, relished in the way the water washed the dirt from her hair; oh, it was marvellous, and she wished there were more opportunities for this.

Who knew something as simple as good hygiene could make such a difference?

Allie took her sweet time lathering soap onto her body, the loofa in her hands feeling like magic on her skin, and she scrubbed until her skin was red and raw. It felt so good to be able to _clean herself,_ felt so good to be able to get rid of the legitimate coat of filth from her body, felt so good to actually see her skin and hair and _body._ It felt so good she didn’t know how to really describe it.

She squirted a decent amount of old shampoo onto her nice clean hand, rubbing her hands together to spread the shampoo, intertwining her fingers, and carefully, she brought her hands up to her hair, rubbing circles into her scalp. Her fingers and nail scratched beneath the dirt, and even though it was one of the best feelings in the world, she’d genuinely forgotten how weirdly hard washing her hair was.

Maybe she’d cut it while she was here. Hopefully there’d be scissors around.

And maybe there’d be clothes.

She looked at her old dirty ones. She wasn’t going to put those on again.

Maybe she’d burn them?

Allie reached for the dusty comb sitting on the little indent of the shower – where the soap is held, the little shelf – and rinsed it. She threw her hair, long and matted and gross, over her shoulder, brought the little finger things of the comb to the tips of her hair, and slowly, but still with an impressive amount of viciousness, worked her way from the tips to the top.

It took her a while.

Like, a _while._

She smoothed her hair down once it was nice and not knotted to all hell. It felt so unbelievably nice to be able to run her hands through her hair and not have her fingers get stuck in dirt and filth.

She wished water wasn’t so rare. Sure, it was adding to the whole ‘apocalypse aesthetic’ or whatever – cliché, right? – but she wished the world was a little nicer and allowed humans this one basic little ‘luxury’.

Was that too much to ask?

Allie didn’t bother with conditioner. She shut the water off after another ten minutes of enjoying the infinite warmth and stepped out of the shower. The bathroom still seemed to be fully intact, with a basin and a dusty mirror and some cupboards and drawers that hopefully still had some stuff in them.

She wiped down the mirror and opened one of the drawers. Inside was a very neat array of hair ties, scrunchies, headbands, bobby pins, and a hairbrush.

She took a hair tie. She’d need that after she found some scissors.

And clothes.

Yeah, clothes might be good.

Allie pulled a dusty towel from the towel rack and shook it one, two, three times, dust particles visible in the rays of sunlight cutting through the windows. She watched them, the towel rubbing the water from her skin, its crustiness making her cringe a little. It was pretty cool, how the world still functioned, even with the chaos taking over it. There were so many small little factors about the world that she loved, natural things that had been around since the very beginning; rain, trees, season changes, and, weirdly enough, dust particles floating in the air.

She smoothed the towel over her hair, wringing a majority of the water out. She looked disgustedly at her old clothes. She figured she should probably burn them, but honestly, she couldn’t be fucked.

The door creaked as she opened it and poked a head out. Precautions, obviously.

A solid cool breeze washed over her bare skin, and for more than a moment, she felt vulnerable. What secrets did this rich person house hold? What monsters lay around every corner, in every crack, in every nook and cranny of this god forsaken fucking house?

Cautiously, Allie stepped out of the bathroom, her bare feet sticking to the dusty floorboards of the hallway. Her hair dripped water beneath them. The water wet the dust and for a second, she wondered if the trail it was creating was bad.

It probably was. She’d focus on it when she’d finished what she was doing.

Allie opened the first door she found. It was a bedroom of some sort, with a double bed pressed up against the window, unmade and as dusty as everything else, and countless posters advertising various video games and action movies, with the occasional Polaroid picture mingled into the mix. The wardrobe directly in front of the door also seemed to have various little pictures blue-tacked onto the giant mirrored doors, and upon closer inspection, they were drawings of creatures and people and landscapes, and whoever the kid who had this room back Pre-Weirdmageddon was a very talented artist.

Slowly, she stepped into the room. Despite the inevitable dust and dirt gathering on every surface of the room, it was actually quite tidy. There weren’t any items of clothing strewn on the floor for spiders to nest in, weren’t any forgotten shoes left to gather bugs; sure, there was a glass on the bedside table that looked like it was probably filled with water, but other than that, this kid obviously enjoyed a tidy space.

She wondered what kind of kid they were. Are. Whichever it was.

If they were alive, how old were they now? Had they survived for this long? Had their family survived, too, or had they been forced to endure the horrible events that came with such a god-awful apocalypse?

But if they were dead, what kind of death did they die? Was it quick and painless? At the hands of another survivor or at the jaws of a Creature with a capital ‘C’? What kind of life did they dream of living when they got older? She hoped they died a meaningful death.

Her fingers creaked as they grasped the handle of one of the wardrobe doors. Her nails dug into her palms, her muscles straining a fair amount, and with one hard tug, the door opened, a cluster of insects crawling out from it.

Allie swallowed a scream and actually looked past the insects and into the wardrobe itself. From the looks of it, this room had belonged to a female a bit larger than her, with a particular love of old graphic t-shirts and sweaters. Each t-shirt hanging up either had a brand label on it, whether on one breast or across both, or a small little graphic in the same spots, with the actual t-shirt coloured in either faded pastel colours or solid black or white. There was a peachy kind of one with a multi-coloured label, a blue one with a small little cat giving the finger when she pulled down the breast pocket it resided in; the amount of random graphic tees this chick had was endless.

And they were all mediums, which was lucky, because it meant they were going to be comfortably large on Allie.

She searched the wardrobe for a shirt that wasn’t moth bitten, settling for a mint green shirt with a middle-finger-bearing-cat in the breast pocket. (The original owner had multiple of the same colour, as it turned out. Not that she was complaining.)

It took her a little longer to find a sports bra (in her size, too!) and a pair of pants (a snug pair of denim shorts which, while not the best, were a lot better than her old pants), but with a pair of relatively clean underwear to seal the deal, Allie dropped the pile of clothes onto the bed – once she’d cleared a spot of dust, obviously – and prepared to get dressed.

Emphasis on the _prepared to_ because _just_ as she was about to put on the underwear, a disgustingly inhuman hand shot through the weak plaster of the walls and made a blind move to grab her.

She quickly swallowed a scream. The hand was grotesque, with long, chipped claws in place of fingernails, blisters and boils covering the dry, ashy-purple skin, the knuckles covered in thing, bristly hairs, and it was bloody, with thick scabs dotting it.

But the most repulsive thing about the hand was the thick cluster of eyes on the back of it.

Her skin crawled and her hands shook as an intense feeling of what she could only describe as _trypophobia_ trickled into her veins. The eyes were in such a pattern that she felt her breathing quicken, the eyes arranged in a hive-like pattern akin to the images she used to see whenever she used to look up _trypophobia_ as a child, and after all this time, they still affected her.

The creature the hand belonged to groaned, long and deep and _guttural,_ and it took everything in her to swallow the third scream in two minutes bubbling up her throat. Water dripped from her hair just as pus-mixed tears dripped from the cluster of eyes, the simultaneous splat of each fluid muffled by the carpet of the bedroom.

The nails on the hand, yellow and chipped and disgusting with dirt and blood under them, continued to claw blindly around for her. Allie shivered. It was a long shiver that started at her toes and rippled up to the crown of her head, shaking the tips of her fingers and causing a violent spasm in her neck.

And not once did her eyes move from the hand.

Not once did she release the eye contact she was making with one of the eyes on the hand.

Her heel hit the leg of the desk chair. When she’d started moving backwards, she didn’t know, but at the exact moment her heel connected with the stiff wood, an unholy screech emanated from behind the bedroom door.

Thank _fuck_ she’d closed it behind her.

Something thudded against the door. The lights flickered above, though they were already dim and close to dying, but mixed with the dust particles that rained down from the ceiling, only visible in the dim light and minimal beams of sunlight snaking in from between the drawn curtains, the entire scenario gained a hell of a lot more _how much is this like a horror movie_ points.

Allie ran her shaking fingers through her sopping wet hair. The still air tingled against her naked skin, the millions of tiny little dustmites floating within the room sticking to the sweat that dribbled down her body. Trickling down her breast, past her cold-hardened nipple, down her one, two, three, protruding ribs and flowing into the dips of her abs, down her hip, thigh, leg, dripping off of her locked knee. Her entire body shivered.

Slowly, Allie slid into a crouch, her knees cracking in protest, the balls of her feet dipping into the aged carpet carefully. She didn’t trust the carpet enough to lay her bare behind down on it, but with a fair amount of difficulty, she managed to wedge herself underneath the desk behind her, her fingers and hands aching for the weight of a weapon, yearning for a piece of splintered wood or an old bat, mourning the absence of both and either.

The lights flickered as whatever was on the other side of the door went for a second try. The _thud_ of the impact seemed to shake the whole room, and her head knocked against the top of the desk as a result.

She silently crawled out from under the desk.

Her back creaked as she stood up straight, an audible _crack_ filling her ringing ears. She felt something pop in the centre of her spine, but ultimately elected to ignore it.

Unless it prevented her from moving – which her slight crouch and functioning legs told her it hadn’t – it really wasn’t a problem she had time to deal with.

The hand in the wall was still blindly stretching towards her. She caught glimpses of its palm, her stomach churning at the sight; in the centre of its palm was a mouth that split into a grin with two large, vampire-like fangs, which she imagined probably dug into the heel of the hand when it was clenched into a fist. The teeth – both top and bottom – dribbled a translucent green slime that had an odd gradient into blue and purple, the slime splattering onto the carpet of the bedroom and getting into the creases of the floor.

Allie swallowed the thick wall of vomit that pushed against her uvula.

Slime oozed in from under the door. It was thick and mucus-y, but wasn’t opaque. It looked a lot similar to the mess that was dribbling from the palm mouth of whatever the fuck was _still_ reaching towards her, and even though it probably seemed incredibly farfetched, she was almost certain she saw glitter twinkling inside the slime.

The thing behind the door rammed into it again. The door bent with the sheer force of the blow, more of the slime oozing from the tiny cracks the bend created, and the creature pulled away with an audible _schloop_ kind of noise. The door returned to its original state with a heavy curtain of dust and plaster raining from the ceiling, the ooze dribbling and dripping from the sides of the door with little plops, and Allie felt scared to so much as breathe.

Whatever was behind the hand in the wall finally seemed to realise that it wasn’t getting anywhere like that; it retracted back into the wall, the mouth on the palm closing slightly and the cluster of eyes flinched.

But instead of disappearing entirely, the fingers of the hand gripped the bottom of the hole, and with a crack that sent a tremble quaking through her entire body, the creature on the other side began to dig at the plaster in the wall in an effort to make the hole big enough for it to crawl through.

However big that actually _was._

Allie felt a wave of numbness run over her. A million thoughts all pooled into one myriad of _mess,_ her body hair standing on end as goose bumps appeared all over her skin, and she felt her heartbeat quicken, felt the tell-tale lump in the back of her throat that signified the beginning of an endless stream of sobs and hiccups, felt pressure build at the back of her eyes and felt it move into her nose and her forehead and she knew it wasn’t just the extreme levels of dust in the room that was making it so hard to breathe.

The hand in the wall was still digging at the wall itself, plaster crumbling into the slime covered patch in the carpet, and Allie’s neck cracked with how hard her head whipped around as the creature behind the door slammed into it, more ooze seeping through every crevice, and hair-like cracks appearing across the wood of the door.

The door heaved with the pressure building behind it. It reminded her of the feeling in the back of her entire head, that heavy pressure of forming tears drilling into her from the nape of her neck to the pupils of her eyes, boring down on her pounding heart and steadily heaving lungs.

The door creaked as the pressure behind it went away with another audible _schloop_ , and Allie silently prepared herself for the creature to go at the door again, listening for the slam over the crumbling of plaster.

But it never came.

Instead, thuds came from a little left of just outside the door. They sounded like they were coming up the stairs of the house, the steps heavy and with a weird pattern to them, as though the person – and she used that term very loosely – was limping, or at least putting more pressure on one leg than the other(s), but they also sounded as though whatever they belonged to was running from something. They were quick and reasonably erratic, and she cautiously climbed onto the desk itself, pulling her legs into her bare chest and wrapping her arms around her knees.

Slowly, the hand in the wall stopped picking away at the plaster. Each eye on the hand turned to look in the direction of the stairs, the mouth on the palm opening into a more circular shape, and the slime coming from both creatures seemed to increase in amount. Allie vaguely wondered if the slime was dripping into the first floor.

The… _thing,_ as she’d decided to call it from now on, stopped at the top of the stairs. She couldn’t see or hear what was happening, but after about sixteen seconds of silence, something dense and made of metal tapped against the floor. It sounded thin, however, like an obscenely large knife, and the echoing _tink_ it made upon collision with the floorboards of the hall only seemed to further her suspicions of what the weapon was.

Another tap. It sent a shiver up her spine. The slow rhythm of the tapping was the only thing she could really hear, aside from the constant slurp of slime, or the occasional creak as the intense mass of whatever was outside the room bent the frame of the hallway itself.

She couldn’t help but hold her breath. The suspension, the anticipation, the situation itself was squeezing against her lungs, forcing her heart into what felt like overdrive, and her fingers twitched with every little drop of fear that trickled into her bloodstream and turned her veins into burning ice.

There was silence for a good fourteen seconds; if she had to guess as to why there was such a long, lingering silence, the most likely cause would be that all three, maybe four – she hadn’t really counted, but she couldn’t see them, so that wasn’t on her – of the creatures outside the bedroom were sizing each other up.

She’d heard somewhere a few years back that animals got territorial. Would the same apply to whatever the fuck Weirdmageddon had produced?

Whatever train of thought she may have had was brutally cut off by the unbearable squeal of something on the other side of the still crumbling wall. It pierced into her ears, flooding her senses, and she could’ve sworn the scream itself was more than just a run of the mill scream. She tasted peaches, smelt death, saw a sickly sunshine yellow that made her feel sick to the stomach, and she felt like the scream was contracting her muscles. Her bones ached from the vibrations of the noise, shivers erupting up her spine and spiking in the nape of her neck, and her hands shook uncontrollably as she physically fought to bring them up to her ears.

It wouldn’t do much, she knew that, but the false sense of security it provided was… comforting.

The squealing raised in pitch as something happened to the creature it had come from. It kept going, higher and higher, until it sounded like a child screaming bloody murder.

Higher and higher, until she couldn’t hear it any more.

Higher and higher, until it left her heart pounding furiously in her chest.

Higher and higher until it eventually just stopped.

There was a sound similar to that of tearing. A prickling sensation settled around the door, the very tips of the waves barely scraping against her skin, but the suddenly bright, neon purple slime the oozed from the cracks on the door and under the door itself told a story that she didn’t want to know.

The new slime mixed with the old. It was the kind of fluorescent colour that made you wonder if it glowed in the dark, or under a black light. The slime itself was bright enough that it made her actually believe that it probably did glow under both of those circumstances, but considering how the prickly sensation in the air was spreading the further the slime oozed towards her, she figured she didn’t really want to find out.

More footsteps as the newcomer stepped closer to whatever the heck was on the other side. They were uneven sounding, as though the one behind the footsteps was unsteady, unstable, maybe even hurt, and she pulled her knees closer to herself. She hoped it was a human. She didn’t want to have to deal with another monster.

Two more footsteps, and then a howl that shook the ceiling rattled her bones, much like the previous squeal had. She watched the wet spot of slime – when had that happened? – move as the creature behind it lunged at the newcomer, the roar cut short as the disgustingly wet _whatever_ connected with the newcomer.

A smaller screech, a dull thud, and another heart stopping sound of flesh itself being torn.

It was sloppy sounding, however, as though whatever was doing the tearing had gotten caught on the slime. Now that she thought about it, the footsteps were… muddy, too, thick and sounding as though the feet creating them was sinking into the inevitable puddle of slime and monster blood that covered the floors.

Allie felt her lips turn into a disgusted grimace. _Eugh._

A final short shout, and there was nothing but silence. The silence itself made her ears ring, made the pounding of her heart seem so much louder than she knew it actually was, and she swallowed thickly. Her hands were shaking as the feeling of anticipation was reignited, like an ice cold flame spreading across her body, hot and cold at the same time.

Dull splashes as the victorious thing outside the bedroom took a few wonky steps that landed in the slime. She wondered if her face was going purple, considering how hard she was fighting to keep her breath in her, but her lungs felt like they would collapse at any minute.

And then something knocked – politely – on the door and she felt like she threw up with how heavily she expelled the air in her lungs.

A mug that was sitting on the desk next to her fell off as she scrambled back, dust clinging to her ass and making the entire situation a hell of a lot more uncomfortable than it needed to be, the tips of her hair still dripping water.

Another set of knocks. Slowly, she lowered herself down off of the desk, the carpet sinking under her toes. Step, step. Closer to the door. She didn’t do anything except hold her breath again; she didn’t want to be too loud, especially when she had no idea what was knocking on the door. It could be anything; a monster, a murderer, one of those furless cats.

And she couldn’t just jump out the window, either; she was on the second story, and she needed to get dressed, anyway. Her stuff was still in the bathroom, too, all her food and weapons and the picture of her family she liked to carry around with her.

So really, she was caught between a rock and a hard place.

Or, more realistically, certain death and certain death.

This wasn’t going to end well for her either way, was it?

Something else sounded like it came stomping up the steps, and she heard a very human voice curse loudly on the other side of the door.

“Oh, _shit!_ ” the voice said, and a fresh set of frantic knocks pounded on the undoubtedly slimy wood of the door, the doorknob rattling. “Uh, if anyone’s in there, I’d really appreciate it if you would let me in!”

Allie’s feet propelled her forward, but she staggered a few paces back from the door and weighed her options. Even though the voice sounded entirely human, she still couldn’t be sure. It could be her mind playing tricks on her in the first place, or, if it was a human, that human could have some questionable – and therefore highly dangerous – morals. They could be a murder.

Or… well, she was a young, vulnerable girl. She felt she had reason to be scared.

The person on the other side seemed to understand her concerns. “Look, I promise I won’t do anything, just please let me in! I killed that stupid fucking slime thing and something else is coming and I’ll help you get out if you just let me in!”

The knob was cold under her hand, and the dust and plaster coating it stuck to her sweaty palms. Allie quickly twisted it, her wrist popping in the process, and without really thinking twice, she threw the door open.

A very human body stumbled in.

She grabbed the person by the back of their shirt and threw them the rest of the way into the room, slamming the door behind her, and turned to them.

They’d collected themselves quickly, their body twisting towards Allie, and they must have opened their mouth to give their thanks, but instead, their – _his,_ she corrected, when she got a good look at the now confirmed guy – jaw hung open loosely.

He snapped it shut with a click of his teeth. Gestured loosely to her body.

“Y’know, as nice as your body is, I don’t think it will be able to withstand the shit that’s out there without clothing on it.”

Allie looked down.

And was promptly met with her completely bare body that she had legitimately forgotten was naked.

_Oh._

* * *

 

Dipper was having a relatively off day.

Between stumbling into a completely desolate _rich person_ neighbourhood, losing Darla as she bolted off towards something deeper within the neighbourhood, getting lost looking for her, ending up in a street that just so happened to be infested with a variety of monsters and animals alike, ending up in a house that contained something that, while not _the_ most repulsive thing he’d ever seen, was definitely up there, ending up having to fight the fucking thing, and finally ending up in the situation he was in now, Dipper felt it was pretty easy to say that he’d been having a bad day.

The naked woman in front of him shot him a look.

“Well, excuse me for not having time to put on some clothes with the goddamn… _whatever_ outside, trying to get in.” she sneered, her hands clenching into fists, and he held up his hands in surrender.

“Fair enough.” A few beats of silence settled between them. He felt like asking why she was naked in the first place, but considering the tension in the moment, he opted against it.

Dipper twisted on his heel. He bent down to pick up the weapon he’d dropped, slipping it into its scabbard on his hip, and he clapped his hands together as he looked around the room. There were so many things in there; mugs on the desk, cheap little deer statues, a collage of pictures and comic book pages over the bed; so many little things.

There was a window on the other side of the room. Considering how dusty the room was, he figured he might as well crack the window open, and the slime squelched louder than before as he made his way over to it. He eased it open. Leaned out of it, once it was open enough, and sucked in a long, deep breath of the semi-clear air outside.

He exhaled with a sigh. The town looked nice from here. Maybe he’d sit here for a bit, enjoy the view and the not dusty air.

He wondered briefly if he could find Darla from here, but the impatient huff behind him told him he may not have enough time.

Dipper sighed through his nose and pulled himself back into the room. The woman – still naked, for some stupid reason – regarded him with a look that really conveyed how unbelievable she found him. It made him kind of upset, actually, though she didn’t have to know that.

He folded his arms across his chest, tapping a finger on his bicep, his lips pursing in thought as he considered the room around him. There was nothing they could use as a potential barricade that might actually hold off against the thing that was coming for them; they could always use the bed and the bedside table next to it, but that was it, really. The wardrobe and desk were those ‘attached to the wall’ type of furniture, and there was no chest of drawers or bookshelf anywhere, and he really didn’t feel like moving an entire fucking bed, so really, they were out of options.

Though…

Dipper stared at the stereo on the other side of the room. It was relatively big, perched on a shelf that, now that he thought about it, could probably be used as a good barricade, but he wouldn’t want to knock the stereo off. Underneath it was a pretty decent CD collection, with a variety of genres ranging from boy bands to songs that had been around since before his parents were born.

… Gee, that brought up uncomfortable memories, but that was thoroughly beside the point.

He felt the woman’s eyes boring into his back as he slowly made his way over to the stereo. He felt pain spike from his stump, a quick little shot that sent little tingles up his spine and made his thigh feel numb, and he knew he’d have to take it off after they’d dealt with this bullshit.

He felt sick at the thought of having to take it off.

The woman – whose name he still hadn’t caught (he should probably get on that, though) – folded her arms under her chest, an eyebrow raised in his direction, her fingers tapping on her bicep similar to how he had before. She walked over to him, the tingly slime still puddling on the carpet squelching between her toes, and he saw her cringe slightly, the relatively-pissed-off look on her face faltering the tiniest little bit.

Heh, y’know, she kinda reminded Dipper of his mother, back when she was… still around, the way her hands curled into fists at her sides as she marched up to him, the way she stubbornly refused to show any emotion other than relatively-pissed-off on her face, the way she snatched the CD Dipper had been inspecting right out of his hands and started berating him –

Wait, he should probably listen, then, shouldn’t he?

“- so don’t just fuck around because we seriously need a plan!” the woman was yelling, her hands waving around to exaggerate her point. He wondered briefly if she realised he hadn’t been listening.

Judging by the look on her face, she had.

Oh boy.

“Were you listening to a single thing I was just saying?” She said, her voice dropping to an accusatory mutter.

Dipper thought about nodding. He really did consider lying, but when he weighed the pros and cons of lying, he eventually settled on shaking his head with a probably not at all reassuring smile.

She shot him a look that quite accurately conveyed the amount of exasperation she must be feeling, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it.

Because at the exact moment he went to sheepishly shrug his shoulders at her face, the entire room shook.

He spread his feet apart, setting his hands in front of him, palms down, in order to steady himself as an almighty roar made his ears ring. His stump twinge. He tried not to think about the monster blister he was probably sporting because he hadn’t taken it off for a longass time, tried not to think about the actual stump itself, tried not to think of how and why he didn’t have his foot anymore –

He turned to the nameless woman and, before he had really processed what he was about to say, shouted, “We need to get you your weapons!” over the excessively elongated howl.

The woman looked at him. “How are we going to do that?!” She yelled back, her face contorted into exasperated confusion. “They’re in the bathroom, which is across the hall!”

The roaring stops halfway through her sentence, and he sighs, running his hands through his matted hair. His fingernails pull at the cluster of knots that have congregated close to his scalp, the bun on top of his head half out, and he suddenly thinks about how nice a shower would be right now.

Wait, no, back to the topic at hand. The potential for a shower can wait.

Absentmindedly, Dipper takes out his bun, scratching at his beard with one hand as he moves to gather his hair up on top of his head and redo his bun with the other. His eyes wander as he considers the options they have to fix their current predicament.

Trying to cross the hall to get the woman’s weapons would be way too dangerous; he only had a basic understanding of the thing outside the door, and it wasn’t very useful stuff. Like, he knew that it shat acid and vomited from its reproductive organs, and he knew that it was deep purple and that its tongue was the most hideous shade of green he had ever had the misfortune of laying his eyes on, but that was it.

Oh, and he knew that it seemed to have some stupid grudge against him or something? He didn’t know the details.

But yeah, he knew that, too.

Dipper groaned. Scratched up and down his face in frustration. Straightened up and fingered around the back of his jeans for the grip of his trusty handgun.

When he found it, he slid it out, twisting it like some action movie hero assassin vigilante person – that thought made him laugh, though, because wasn’t he being called the Red Dipper nowadays as a sort of vigilante superhero name bestowed upon him because he went around helping people during his search for Mabel’s bubble? – by the trigger or whatever on his finger and handed it, grip first, to the woman.

She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.

The other eyebrow raised when he handed her his bat, though.

“Uh, okay,” is all she can say, but her lips purse, her brow furrowing with confusion that never really left, and he waits for her to continue. “But then, how are you going to fight?”

He can’t help the little smirk that creeps into his lips.

His left hand settles on his right hip, fingers creaking as they wrap around the hilt of the weapon that’s resting there, and in one swift movement, he unsheathes it.

“Just because I wouldn’t feel comfortable fighting by myself, because I’m not very experienced with a bat, or a gun, and – holy _shit,_ is that a _fucking sword?”_

The smirk stretches into a grin as the bloodied blade catches patches of sunlight in the few spots where it’s clean.

The woman’s face is unreadable. She stands, staring, her knuckles white with how tight she’s gripping the bat, but she shakes her head and her face settles into a more relaxed look. Her eyes, deep green and piercing, met his, and she shrugged.

“Well,” she said, her voice a monotonous drone that implicated the exact level of ‘done’ she was at that moment. “We have weapons, so what do we do now?”

Dipper wasted no time in replying.

“Simple!” He felt his lips stretch into a wide, shit-eating grin, felt a mischievous and probably insane glint sparkle into his eyes, and he moved towards the door.

He set his hand on the knob, his fingers wrapping around it, nails cutting into his palm, and he prepared to twist it. It was the only thing that really separated them and the thing hunting them down, but Dipper could already feel the adrenaline pumping into his veins, heating his skin and making his body numb.

He looked back at the woman, and with a sweeping swing of his free arm, finished his sentence.

“We’re going to totally fucking anime this bullshit.”

* * *

 

Wendy felt warm.

Well, maybe warm wasn’t the right word for it. She felt… cold, actually. Physically, it felt as though an entire bucket of ice had been poured onto her skin, washing over her brain and clearing her thoughts completely.

But emotionally, she felt warm.

She’d waited thirteen years for this exact moment. Thirteen years of looting stores, thirteen years of running from Bill and his cronies, thirteen years of desperately trying to survive…

Thirteen years of trying to find those fucking kids…

Thirteen years of waiting, and boy, was it worth the wait. She felt overwhelmed with the mixed emotions that were crawling into her mind, turning into physical sensations that she couldn’t even begin to describe – her skin growing cold, but her blood becoming warm. Her heart pounding, her tongue feeling swollen in her throat, her knees shaking and her thighs going numb, but it was all more than just those simple feelings – and it honestly felt like it was too much.

The stairs creaked under her weight. They were old and rickety, the creaking spots unavoidable as the entire staircase creaked as a whole, but she still winced every time they did. It was such an ugly groan, years of excessive use inducing a heart-stopping feeling of fear comparable to a mini-heart attack.

She hated those fucking stairs.

She cracked her fingers, intertwining them and straightening her arms in front of her, the sound more satisfying than she realised, and started taking the stairs two at a time. The soles of her boots slammed against the creaky wood, something she couldn’t help but internally cringe at – God, so _noisy_ – but the constant stream of excitement filling her body washed away any concerns she may have.

She was about to go find Dipper.

She was about to go find _Dipper._

_She was about to go fucking find **Dipper.**_

Wendy felt her hands begin to shake. She tried to clench them into fists, hoping it would stop the trembling, but she knew it was useless. They beat against her thighs as she held them at her sides, and when she lifted them, they came very close to knocking against each other with how violently they were shaking.

She wondered vaguely if the others were having a similar reaction. Were they just as excited as she was? Were they shaking, too?

She absentmindedly shoved the sleeves of her oversized letterman jacket – where the hell had she gotten a fucking letterman jacket? – up to her elbows and opened the door to the attic.

She could’ve cried when she saw it.

They’d never changed the layout. It was dustier, and a little messier, but in terms of layout, it hadn’t changed one bit. It still looked like it had been completely split down the side; one wall was lined with boy band posters and literal glitter, and the other was lined with those ‘connect the dots’ charts used for solving mysteries, whatever they were called.

It felt… it made Wendy feel like they’d never left.

She moved to what used to be Mabel’s bed. Stan had given her Mabel’s side of the room – it felt wrong for the first couple of years. It was Mabel’s bed, Mabel’s stuff, and it should stay like that – when this whole mess had first blown over, the words “Just don’t fuck anything up” being thrown over the old man’s shoulder, a plastic bucket thrust into her hands, and it all felt so… wrong.

Her knees ached as she knelt down, her skin pressing against the cool, dusty floorboards through the holes in her jeans, and the floor – the _room_ – creaked. Her fingers groped around under the bed, her body leaning forward the further she reached in, and her fingertips very quickly found the handle of the bucket. She dragged it out, unclipped the bright pink lid and removed it, grabbed the sides, and looked in with a tensing of her shoulders.

It was filled with clothes.

Granted, there wasn’t a lot of clothes; in fact it had about two of everything, something for every weather condition, but that was it. She was lucky enough to have retained many of her old flannels – a love she was sure she would never get out of – and she ran her fingers over one.

It was soft, but it didn’t stop the shaking.

God, she was shaking so goddamn much. It was a constant quiver, a consistent tremble that went from the very tips of her toes and fingers to the crown of her head, stretching and pulling through her muscles. It felt like everything inside of her was shaking; her heart, her lungs, her stomach, brain, every muscle and bone in her body, and even her ovaries and uterus. It was… surreal, to say the least, to be shaking so much that it felt like your reproductive organs were shaking, too.

Wendy tried not to dwell on that feeling.

To occupy herself, she grabbed her backpack, discarded on the floor nearby, and started shoving clothes in. She wouldn’t need a lot; her letterman jacket was fairly warm, and her jeans should last her a while. She never changed her shoes, rarely changed her top, never found time to change her underwear ( _eugh_ ), and never really changed any of her clothes – as if she had time anymore – so why was she packing a bag?

She shoved a shirt into the bag.

_Well, we should be gone for a while,_ she internally rationalised, _so maybe taking some clothes won’t hurt._

But clothes weren’t as important as she knew food would be. Her hand returned to the bucket in front of her, digging around under the minimal amount of clothes, fingertips gliding over each piece of fabric, and there was a ringing thud as her nails made contact with one of the various containers of food and spreads nestled at the bottom of the bucket.

Her fingers gripped the lid. She couldn’t tell just by the shape was exactly it was, but she nevertheless ripped it out from under the clothes and shoved it just as unceremoniously into her bag as she had the three items of clothes she planned on taking with her.

And… that was it.

That was all she could pack without wasting her personal supplies.

Her bag was already packed with the necessities, like pads and four and a half bottles of water, so that was literally all she had to add; two t-shirts and whatever food she’d grabbed.

Wendy zipped up the bag. Slid her arms through the straps as she stood. It was so _light_ , so _empty,_ the container of food digging into her back, and the water bottles nestled at the bottom sloshing with every step she took, and it felt wrong, to a degree.

Slowly, she stood, her knees creaking and her body still shaking – _fuck –_ and made her way out of the attic. The stairs whined under her weight, just as loud and obnoxious as always, the bustle occurring downstairs seeming to upset the stairs themselves, but sending an extra shudder of excitement throughout Wendy’s entire body, and her hands shook.

Well, shook _more._

The living room was filled when she turned the corner. Out of those selected to go on The Mission, it seemed as though most of them were there. Granted, everyone in the entire fucking Shack was there, but she picked out those who were on her team, all having congregated into the front of the crowd to wait for everyone else.

She sidled up against Soos, her hip knocking him out of the way. He smiled softly at her, but Wendy could tell he was just excited as she was. Candy was on her other side, the small girl regarding her with a weirdly stoic nod, before turning back to Stan sitting in his chair. Grenda was at Candy’s side, her size trumping both her and Candy, and creating a sandwich-like effect for their small little group, the feeling amplified by the two Manotaurs undoubtedly accompanying them at both Soos and Grenda’s side, and Wendy suddenly felt very small.

Stan cleared his throat, and the entire room settled into a neat hush.

“Alright, good, we’re all here.”

He rubbed his hands down his face. Wendy felt a pang of sympathy stab at her gut.

Silently, Stan made eye contact with each of them. Wendy never could tell what was going on in the old bastard’s mind, and it hadn’t gotten any better since this entire shebang had come to be. He was much more silent, resigned, _serious,_ his body becoming visibly weakened as he grieved for his presumably lost family, but he never stopped his search for them; even when they’d gone thirteen long years without so much as a hint of their whereabouts, he trudged on.

Wendy admired that.

“You’re all set, then?” He asked, gravelly voice cutting through the tensing silence.

Simultaneous nods from them all.

“Good,” he sighed, his eyes dropping slightly, “Very good.”

His gaze snapped back up, his face stern and determined, and with a lot more seriousness than the surface of his words let on, he stated, “Now, you kids listen here: I don’t want to see any of you back here until you bring back my nephew.”

Stan stared them all down; Wendy felt Soos shift his weight from foot to foot, saw Grenda widen her stance in her peripherals, physically felt the look the Manotaurs shared over each of their heads, and Wendy clenched her hands into fists.

It was going to be a long journey, they all knew that, but with a mutual understanding that Wendy felt would never be achieved again, all six of them nodded, short and curt and meaning business.

Butterflies couldn’t begin to describe the feeling in her stomach.

Because finally, after thirteen years, they were going to find Dipper _fucking_ Pines.

_Finally._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know if this chapter makes sense and for that i apologise, but to be fair most of it was written when i was tired and it was 4am so. cut me some slack, ey?
> 
> but yeah! its almost 12 and i have school tomorrow and haven't slept properly in two days so if you'll excuse me, imma go pass out now.
> 
> but before i go, yall know the drill! comment or send me love/hate over onto my [tumblers,](pedoseidon.tumblr.com) aaaand yeah!
> 
> peace out bitches

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah, that was that. that was the beginning, and if you thought that was bad, wait till i actually get into it! oh, the things i could do with this...
> 
> my [tumblr](pedoseidon.tumblr.com)


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